Stupid fools

If you want to have a good laugh at the incredible stupid incompetence of certain journalists, or their criminal intent for that matter, you only have to turn to the pages or the website of the Washington Times. The paper's Bill Gertz is claiming that China is arming both sides in Iraq by concluding a deal with the government of Nuri al-Maliki to deliver small arms and by supplying shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, which end up in the hands of Iraqi insurgents. (The Washington Times: "China arms both sides")

Now let's see... Iran is actually supporting the current Iraqi government, because it is led by Shiites. al-Maliki has visited Tehran and met with Iranian president Ahmadinejad. So if China is indeed arming the al-Maliki government and Iran, it is supporting one side only, unless the Washington Post can prove that China is also arming the Sunni insurgents. Ah yes, but it does, says Gertz... because the insurgents are capturing arms from the Iraqi government. That's a pretty piece of mind boggling logic. The insurgents are no doubt also capturing weapons from the American occupiers, which by the same logic proves that Bush is arming the insurgents fighting “America's glorious men and women in uniform put in harm's way”.

An anonymous American official ads that “the Iraqi government needs to better understand that the U.S. military is fighting and dying to give their nation the opportunity for a free and open society and government,” and therefore shouldn't buy arms from China. Yeah right, the 650,000 Iraqis murdered as a result of the American occupation will not have the privilege to enjoy this “free and open society” which 2 million other Iraqis have fled and where you are more likely to encounter a suicide bomber at the next street corner than return safely home.

Richard Fisher, a China specialist with the International Assessment and Strategy Center added that “from oil deals now to arms deals, we are allowing China to benefit from the stability earned with American blood.” Which idiot could be brain-damaged enough to mention Iraq and stability in the same sentence, let alone stability earned with American blood? The American military is doing nothing but creating instability, chaos and carnage all over the world.

For good measure, Bill Gertz adds that the United States will need its nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. He quotes Steve Henry, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters as saying that “China is building new strategic nuclear forces and the buildup cannot be ignored.” Of course, a statement without any proof to back it up. China has a small nuclear deterrent force sufficient to retaliate, but is certainly not expanding it. Moreover, China is the only nuclear power which has solemnly declared that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons and will never use them against non-nuclear states.

The propaganda machine of the Washington Times is continuously churning out lies, nonsense and incitement to war crimes. Press freedom should be as extensive as possible, but the Washington Times is crossing a red line.

'Feral' Blair

Tony – the liar – Blair compared the news media to “a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits” and further lamented that he “was not the first prime minister to face extraordinarily brutal treatment”. (The Independent: Simon Kelner: Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq? ; The New York Times: Blair Compares News Media to ‘Feral Beast’ in Angry Parting Shot)

Yo' Blair! Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren't you!? The real problem is that the news media were not 'feral' nor 'brutal' enough early enough to tear a budding war criminal like you – and your buddy Bush – too pieces so the Iraq war could have been avoided. Far from 'feral', the press was too weak and meek to denounce your blatant lies with sufficient ferocity to kick you out of office and into the place where you belong: the dock of an international war crimes tribunal. The lies you invented to start the Iraq war amount to incitement to genocide and mass murder and warrant the death penalty.

As Martin Bright observes (New Statesman: It takes one to know one): “In fact, the real media scandal remains the journalists who were complicit in justifying the spurious intelligence on behalf of the government and presenting it as fact to an unsuspecting public. Collectively, the profession failed in its duty by being too credulous in the weeks leading up to the war. Too many journalists who should have known better became willing collaborators in the government's propaganda machine, rather than holding the government to account.”

When you leave office in two weeks time, Mr Bliar, you will walk out of damned Downing Street No 10 a free man. 650,000 Iraqis are dead as a result of your lies. That will leave a permanent blood stain on the reputation of Britain. One of the reasons is, the British press was not 'feral' enough.

Obscene profits

A storm of criticism may still prevent the 15 British marines and sailors who were released by Iran of getting rich by selling their stories to the British tabloids. While they were being released, sporting brand new Iranian suits and presents offered by Iranian president Ahmadinejad, six of their colleagues were killed in Iraq. The living can still sell there stories, while the dead can't.

The Guardian (Anger over Iran hostages' media deals) noted that selling their stories might undermine “the reputation of Britain's armed forces”. In the eyes of the peoples of the world, their reputation has never been good anyway, first defending Britain's colonial empire and later acting as the running boys (and a gal or two) of U.S. imperialism. “The sailors and Marines held in Iran have been so compliant and have already said so much that they have caused excruciating embarrassment to many people in this country.” Oh dear! (The Times: Our Forces will pay with a worldwide loss of reputation)

But selling one's story for a 100,000 pounds is obscene indeed. “What can Faye Turney say that is worth a six-figure sum?”, asked The Times. We are not even talking about a book deal, but a mere newspaper story which can be told in an hour or so. That's 1.5 million yuan! Leading Sea-something Faye Turney was offered the money by The Sun and ITV. Her annual salary is less than 30,000 pounds. The result is not even worth reading (so I won't link to the story here), besides the fact that this lady uses the F*** word four times. It seems the British ladies have lost some class since the Victorian era.

It seems however, that some newspapers and TV-stations backtracked and canceled their offers of paying outrageous amounts of money. Anything worth telling could be told at a press conference – free of charge. It is unclear whether Faye was paid, Danny Masterton was paid a hundred pounds by the Sunday Mail and Chris Air offered his story free of charge to his local paper, the Manchester Evening News. (The Times: All at Sea)

And yes, “There is an inducement to say that things were as bad as possible.” (The Times) Moreover, the Ministry of Defense will try to put a spin on things. “The border between fact and fiction could be every bit as treacherous as that between Iraqi and Iranian waters” (The Independent: He who pays the piper calls a dubious tune) How can anything even remotely worth reading come out of this travesty of journalism?

In China, the press faces another problem. The newspapers don't pay their interviewees, it's the other way around. Some unscrupulous journalists or shady characters try to extort money, either not to publish unfavorable news, or to publish distorted positive news.

Either way, money should be banned from the journalism profession, except of course a decent remuneration paid by the media to the journalists researching and writing the stories... Or as Peter Preston wrote in The Guardian: “Loot is the foe of truth” (Loot is the foe of truth).

A useless question

It has become a tradition that China's premier meets the Chinese and foreign press following the closing session of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress. The questions reporters are allowed to ask are vetted beforehand, perhaps with a few exceptions when a final question is granted at the end of the press conference and a reporter is chosen who may reasonably be expected not to pose a question which might turn out controversial.

The first part of the question posed by Bruno Philip of Le Monde was certainly pre-arranged, seeking clarification of an article premier Wen had written for the People's Daily about the long period the initial stage of socialism would last. That, however, was only the intro for the ambush he had prepared to be aired on live TV. A book has been published in Hong Kong, entitled “Zhao Ziyang: Captive Conversations”, written by the 87-year old Zong Fengming, who had more than a hundred casual conversations with Zhao between 1991 and 2004. (Asia Sentinel: What China Might Have Been)

The former premier and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party regretted that he hadn't pushed political reform more vigorously. What did premier Wen had to say about this, Bruno Philip inquired.

Well, of course nothing at all. This kind of ambush-questioning never works. It may achieve either of two things: get the person to whom the question is directed to lose his or her temper and thereby lose face. This is very unlikely to happen to premier Wen. Or, cause embarrassment all around, which is not going to get your question answered. And so it happened: “your question about the book has no relation whatsoever with my article in the People's Daily and I haven't read the book”, was Wen's short reply.

The only thing Bruno Philip achieved, was to utter the name of Zhao Ziyang in the Great Hall of the People during a live broadcast and to have all references to his question and Wen's answer purged from transcripts of the press conference. His ambush-question was utterly futile and ensures that it will be a long time before he will be allowed to ask another question on live TV, if ever... The bottom line is: be sensible and don't play stupid games...

Cut-and-paste journalism

Editorial offices around the world rely more and more on cut-and-paste journalism. Well, everybody does and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. There's no need to reinvent hot water. Provided you know what you are doing.
If you cut the head and cut the tail and paste the tail where the head should be, well... you get the picture.

If I go to the plenary meeting of the National People's Congress or to a press conference, grab a bite and a beer (or two) afterwards and then jump in a taxi or head to the subway, in the meantime the story has already been put on the web by Reuters, AP, CNN, BBC World and a hundred plus other media. Editors in Brussels or Timbuktu don't have to wait for their local correspondent to file his story. Its all on the web! Just cut and paste! The only problem is: editors in Brussels or Timbuktu don't know what they are cutting and pasting. The result is disgusting, disinformation at best and a travesty of “quality journalism”.

The TV equivalent of cut and paste is the 10-second sound bite. At a press conference at the Great Hall I was almost literally jumped upon by a female CCTV journalist the moment she discovered I could speak Chinese. In another setting she could have got away with it :-) But she only had one question. I don't answer one question, because I don't want to be turned into a 10-second sound bite.

There is a time for play, a time for booze and a time for serious reporting. You can even mix it in a cocktail. But in the paper or on TV, the outcome should be worth reading or watching, providing accurate information, not cut-and-paste tails on the shoulders.

State propaganda

The United States is usually described as the land of press freedom. And the Chinese press as only publishing propaganda. Yes, almost anything can get published in the U.S., but the major TV stations and newspapers are also serving as propagandists for the U.S. government.

Here's what Paul Craig Roberts has to say about press freedom in the U.S. (Counterpunch: The US and Israel, the Real Failed States):

“The people are enfeebled because the media no longer has independence. The US media serves as propagandist for the state. It cannot be otherwise in a highly concentrated media run not by journalists but by advertising executives protecting stock values that derive from federal broadcast licenses granted by the state.”

“Like the three monkeys, Congress sees no evil, the media speaks no evil, and the people hear no evil. In the US "news" consists of the government's propaganda. "News" in America is exactly like the "news" in George Orwell's 1984.”

Because of the absence of independent news organizations, the lies and deceit of the Bush administration are underreported. The actions of the peace movement are likewise underreported. The major American media are propagandists of the Empire. But the Internet allows the peoples of the world to get organized to strike back.

The U.S. media are stirring up a frenzy in preparation for the war on Iran allegedly to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons. But the Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani once again declared that Iran is not seeking to build nuclear weapons. Where could you read that? Not in the major American media. On the People's Daily website: Iran never wants to make nuclear bombs: chief negotiator.