我的奥运之夜感想：Western Media's China Coverage must be Fair

On the eve of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, western media coverage about China is heating up to a frenzy. What still bothers me is that overall the negative press about China easily outnumbers any positive coverage 5 to 1. On Yahoo, Google, MSN, NBC, BBC, and in Canada, the CBC, most news items about China are related to human rights violations, Tibet protests, pollution, censorship of the Internet, government propaganda, and a myriad of other social problems in China. I had a hard time finding any main stream western media coverage on the astonishing achievements of the World's most populous nation in the last twenty years. Never before had there been a nation that eliminated hunger for so many people in such a short time, and gave opportunities to so many improvished citizens to become something resembling a middle class. Human rights do not matter when you are dying from hunger. It puzzles me that why so many in the western media seem to only see the negatives and ignore the positives.

Of course, China still has many problems. There is much to be improved on the individual freedom and human rights front. Pollution is indeed a huge problem that must be tackled, not just for the Olympics, but for the 1.3 billion Chinese whose future depends on it. What I find unacceptable is how hypocritical we are when it comes to criticizing China. The problem is, every one of the things that China is being accused of are the same things that western society is every bit as guilty of!

Do we not control (and even pepper spray/arrest/beat) protesters at WTO meetings and every George Bush visit I can remember? Is the US, Canada or Australia proud of the historic treatment of our aboriginal communities, the so-called "Red Indians"? Even now many native Americans consider themselves mistreated. What would Americans (or Canadians for that matter) think if the native Americans want independence and their land back? As far as pollution, we Americans or Canadians should be insanely embarrassed over our complete mismanagement of the stewardship we inherited of some of the world's most pristine environments in North America! How hypocritical is that when the US government does not allow drilling for oil in Alaska or in US offshore waters, but encourages Americans to drive Hummer SUVs and use energy that was derived at other nations' evironmental expense? We've been destroying the ozone, the air, the water and the land faster than anyone in North America, and in Europe since the commencement of the industrial revolution, but now China wants to follow our example and catch up, we say to them: no you cannot do that?

And as for propaganda, please, all governments use it. The Chinese government is guity of using propaganda to control its people. We all know that. But the point is that western governments are not immune to that. What was that about in the US and UK when Bush and Blair said Saddam had WMDs?

Freedom of the Press is important, but so is fairness.

- yours truly dragonflypdx as always

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