Posts Tagged ‘Media’

Swine flu

I have been watching this lately. It's very unfortunate that New Zealand students contracted the virus in Mexico, and brought it back to the country. However, New Zealand is still very lucky so far, just a few isolated cases, not a full pandemic.

Also although for most of the time I was very critical of the government here, this time I have to say, the health authority has done quite a a good job. The response was fast, open and transparent, it gave people confidence and assurance so they got no reason to panic.

However, I was totally shocked to see the ignorance of some people here in the country (quite a lot of them in the Herald discussion forum). "This is just a media hype", "it's fuelled by pharmaceutical companies", "normal flu kills more than this". They are demonstrating the total lack of knowledge on ..everything. That's fine, no one knows everything but the important thing is, those people got no interest to learn, but choose to remain arrogant - they just don't know how lucky they really are.

Although there is no reason to panic right now, people need to be aware and closely watch the development of the situation. This is a new H1NI strain (same as the Spanish flu) and most of us got no immunity.It may appears to be mild and not that pathogenic right now but if we just sit and let the virus spread, it is almost certain that this strain will mutate and who knows how this virus may evolve.

However, even to adapt the conservative version of death number, the overall mortality rate is about 5%, which is still significantly higher than normal flu mortality rate - I don't have the number here but if my memory serves, that number should be around 0.4%. Now you start to see why this thing needs to be controlled.

flinging chopsticks

The Timaru Herald got a very interesting story (in weird way) on a racial clash in Timaru. The really interesting part is not the story itself, in fact, after reading the whole thing, I still don't know how it was started, maybe staffs of the Timaru Herald also need a bit of improvement on writing English, just like I do:)

It is how the witness described the event really amused me:

"Two of them [Asians] were in school uniform and an adult was with them. One had two baseball bats, [and was] flinging them around like bloody chopsticks," a witness said. He said as soon as the youth with the baseball bats appeared everything escalated. “It was just like a rat’s nest being disturbed by a fox terrier, they were going everywhere.

bezdomny ex patria's comment focused on the racial motivation of this witness recall:

...  why? I mean, why use this word “chopsticks” in your seriously warped simile? Could it be the Asian-ness of those doing the flinging around? Some bizarre stereotype of kung fu movies?
And to then follow that up with rats? Wow, you really are trying to reinforce the image of Timaru as a racist, redneck hole, aren’t you?

Well, it sure did a good job on reinforcing the image that I always had in my mind: rural parts of the South Island is the most racist part of NZ. If you are from there, no offence, the bad guys are always the minority.

However, as  a Chinese who get so used to racial remarks, I was really wondering, how did this comment made itself onto the paper, black and white? Regardless of racism part, this chopsticks comment is also factually flawed. It is a common sense that when you are in middle of a fight, you hold on with your baseball bats and smash you enemies as hard as you like, you don't fling them around like "blood chopsticks". I suspect that this witness either exaggerated the situation, or made the whole thing up.

For Timaru Herald, allowing such comments to be published on its paper, really shows how it lacks professionalism.

Let the words of the Big Brother spread

Chinese Media yesterday reported that China is planning to invest 45 billion yuan to raise it's "International images" through foreign broadcasting, possibly to open a "CNN" style news channel.

I always believe that to domestic market, CC's CCTV (lots of CCs, if you can guess what the first two Cs stand for:)) strongly  reassembles a lot of characteristics of the telescreen. Xinwen Lianbo would be an obvious example, every night at 7, if you want to watch TV, that's pretty much the only thing available as it is simulcasted in every major Chinese TV channel.

So will this new channel become an International Edition of the telescreen? I don't know, aren't we already got CCTV 9?

I tried to watch CCTV 9 a while but it's just got too boring eventually, BBC WORLD offers a much wider perspective, more up to date news. What CCTV 9 really amused me is that, no matter what kind of news programme you are watching (like "Asia Today", "World Wide Watch", or "BizChina"); no matter what happened to the World,  the headline almost always stay the same, usually involving a high ranking government official or communist party boss meet foreign visitors, or their words on various issues.

Clearly, to be a respected and trusted world new channel, you must got both global perspective and an editorial independence. Global perspective ... can be possible but I don't expect it from CCTV, but editorial independence? I guess we got another hundred year to wait.

Facism ... and Communism

Excerpts from Obama's inauguration speech:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

Most of us should have no problem with this kind expression, but let me remind you that in Asia, there's a hyper-sensitive country with fragile feelings, which its regime still insists that communism is the only way forward

China's state television, CCTV actually broadcasted Obama's inauguration live on its news channel. If my memory serves me right, this is the first time they have done such thing, and I think CCTV should be praised for that.

However, its hyper-sensitivity eventually kicked in. The live pictures were cut moments after Obama mentioned "Communism". The relative paragraph in Obama's speech is also removed in the "full text" of the speech published on most Chinese websites.

Even as a Chinese, I have great difficulty of understanding where this hyper-sensitivity comes from. When he mentions communism, he clearly means Soviet Union. Well, we all know China is more of a capitalist country anyway. If Ministry of Truth has problem on how Obama weights communism and facism as kind of the same thing ... if you can read Chinese,have a look on how Minitrue finds an "appropriate place" for the CCP.

Despite the hyper-sensitivity thing, I think Chinese media generally did well this time. Yes they removed parts from the "full text" of the Obama's speech, but most of them were forced to do so. But look at the brighter side, Obama's remark made to the public airwave tells me that Live pictures on CCTV probably are in fact, live pictures and not delayed - now that's quite rare, especially for political events.

Pathetic.

The biggest non-story story on New Zealand Herald appeared on its website this afternoon.

The paper 'discovered' that the "happy family" in Labour party pamphlet on 2008 budget is actually an American family, and the photo was purchased from a stock photo website for $20.

What a big news.

I really cannot see what's the problem here. Every media, including those published by APN use "seems to be relevant" stock photos to fill up spaces, what they gonna say about this?

From the reported "news", I also cannot see where the pamphlet claims the family in photo is a "New Zealand family". I mean, does it have to be a New Zealand family? Can the photo be used in manner that is telling us:"that's how we are going to be"?

New Zealand Herald's news standard is in fast decline. The most respected newspaper in New Zealand has now become some kind of anti-labour propaganda machine.

Is this kind of 'news' newsworthy? Possibly, but it's tabloids and bloggers' job to report those stuffs. I didn't expect it to appear on Herald's website as a major headline(sideswipe may be fine).

We are all frastrated with the Labour government, but this kind of political biased, desperate political bashing is just pathetic and disgusting.

I'm now really worried that  those right wing news media would become "Minitrue" type of propaganda machine like CCTV in China or FOX in States once the National is in power.

insult to Chinese people?

CNN was recently hot on Chinese agenda, for allegedly "insulting the Chinese people".

I heard a lot of about this last week, however, as I was straggling with my assignments, I really did not have time to find out what Mr Jack Cafferty, the CNN commentator said about Chinese.

Then I found transcipt, which I verified its source to make sure it is exactly how it happened. The alleged insult took place in CNN's "The Situation Room", when host Wolf Blitzer asked a question about American's relationship with China to CNN political commentator, Jack Cafferty.

The controversial conversation, is as below:

BLITZER: One of the arguments that some of the pro-China elements is making, Jack, is that this is a very different China today than existed 10 years ago, certainly 20 or 30 years ago. This communist regime today is almost like a capitalist regime. They’re a huge economic superpower and that we have a lot at stake in maintaining this economic relationship with China.

CAFFERTY: Well, I don’t know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We’re in hawk to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart.

So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.

The word "they" in the highlighted sentence was intrepreted as "Chinese people" in Chinese news reports. I doubt this, for simple reasons. Blitzer's question clearly defined the word "China" as the "communist regime", and Cafferty was talking about economical issues, although what he said was very extremist, I just cannot the reason why the last "they" word should be interpreted as anything else but Chinese government.

This "insult" angered many Chinese saying that they will boycott CNN. However, I don't really know how they are planning to boycott CNN, since they cannot watch CNN in their Cable TV anyway.

Although I don't feel offended about this, I believe Mr Cafferty should still apologise as his comments were really ambiguous, which he properly did, he apologised to those who "interpreted the comments in this way."

There is a trouble commonly seen across western media on how to properly refer a country called China, or Chinese government. In most cases, we refer American government as "Washington" or "the White House", British government as" the Downing Street", there is no ambiguity.

However, because of the complexicity of Chinese issues (Taiwan, Tibet ...), the word "China" can have different meanings in people with different political stands. Some of possible intrepretations on the word "China" I can think of:

• People's Republic of China's de facto controlled area, i.e. mainland China plus Hong Kong and Macau --- pro-independence people from Taiwan would interprete the word in this way.
• Republic of China, i.e. Taiwan --- likely interpretation by pro-unification people from Taiwan
• Mainland China only --- Some Hong Kong and Macau people would interprete the word in this way.
• Mainland China + Hong Kong + Macau + Taiwan --- offical interpretation of the word "China", by the PRC Government, Most people from PRC would interprete the word in this way too.

... and no need to mention, pro-independence tibetans interprete the word as the Han culture dominanted area of PRC, i.e. exclude Tibet.

The word "Chinese" can cause even more trouble. Oh, and the phrase "mainland China" I used includes Tibet, because it is a fact at this moment, and if you discuss Tibet seperately, you'll find that there are just unlimited number of possible interpretations.

If you are a journalist reading this, I strongly suggest you that next time when reporting on the issues relating to "China", don't forget to be more specific on what "China" you are really taking about, refer to their full names such as "PRC government" or "mainland Chinese people", otherwise when you wake up one day you may just find yourself under hails of criticisms and even death threats made by extremists from one or both side of the Taiwan Strait.