State media attacks Western coverage as unfair, but analyst says reporting objective
The mainland media lambasted 'biased and twisted' overseas reports on the Xinjiang violence, accusing international media of 'going against the principles of fairness and objectivity'.
Xinhua, the People's Daily and its nationalist tabloid offshoot, the Global Times, have criticised overseas media for double standards. But an analyst says the criticism is wide of the mark, and the reporting has been fair.
An article by a People's Daily editor named Ding Gang in the Global Times was picked up by mainland news portals after it was republished by Xinhua. In it he criticised The Wall Street Journal for publishing a commentary by exiled Uygur activist Rebiya Kadeer, who was blamed by Beijing for fomenting conflict in Xinjiang.
'The image of Rebiya Kadeer and her bylined story 'The real Uygur story'... was totally unacceptable,' Ding wrote. The Journal made no comment yesterday.
On chat room Bokee.com, many English articles were translated and criticised. Netizens listed Western media, from CNN and The New York Times to London's Evening Standard, who had used 'improper terms' or wrongly captioned photographs.
Lu Yiyi, a research fellow at Nottingham University's China Policy Institute, said many foreign journalists for long had held a perception that China exercised suppressive policies over minority groups. This impression had affected some of their judgment on the incident and their language.
But the notion of bias was rejected by Huang Yu, the dean of School of Communication Studies at Baptist University, who said quality international news organisations had not twisted facts.
'Western reports on the Xinjiang riot were much better than last year in Tibet when foreign media were shooed away and many international reports carried highly politicised stories,' Professor Huang said.
Overseas media were mostly barred from reporting on events in Lhasa and the state offered little information. 'For Western media, the voices from another side are always bound to be heard, and that is why Kadeer's letter and interview would be carried.'
