China did show torch relay protest footage
THE SUBSTANCE of the points made in the article “Time for a fresh look at China” (July issue) are in no way negated by Amanda Sebestyen’s letter (last issue) neither do they contradict NUJ policy of supporting the freedom of journalists to report in China.
The article challenged the preconceptions and prejudices on the part of journalists and editors about the situation in China which all too often lead the British media to mislead the public. Instead, they promote the conception that the role of a journalist is not to seek truth from the reality around them but to perform the mission to promote liberal democracy in the world (a cause also championed by George W Bush, in Iraq for instance).
This approach is exemplified in the reporting of the BBC’s Beijing correspondent James Reynolds, which was referred to in that article. He told millions of British viewers that the Chinese population would never see images of the disruption of the relay of the Olympic torch in London, with the commentary: “The Chinese Communist Party has a simple rule. It will not show any pictures which ruin this country’s idea of a trouble free Games. China insists on keeping bad news away from its citizens. It’s a kind of ostrich strategy. People may be looking up [at the huge overhead TV screens that transmit the news in the big cities] but tonight the Government’s made sure that their heads are buried in the sand.”
In fact the main Chinese TV station had already broadcast the images from London before James Reynolds’ report was aired by the BBC.
It is in fact the British population that is being systematically misled about the situation in China as a result of commentators starting with prejudices and preconception and then searching for empirical evidence to back them up.
Might I suggest that a more inductive approach be adopted which starts instead from the reality that is experienced — and at very least a consideration of the time difference — rather than an impish impatience to expose such imagined realities as the “ostrich strategy” of the Chinese media and the Communist Party.