US hack feigns outrage at Huawei’s ‘bribe’
- A Washington Post reporter’s response to an offer from Huawei to visit its headquarters taught the firm what it is up against with the US news media
It will be hard to find a greater virtue-signalling hack than Josh Rogin from The Washington Post.
Scandal-hit Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies is on a public-relations campaign to change its terrible image in the United States and is offering what we in the media biz call junket trips to American journalists to visit its headquarters in Shenzhen.
Many multinationals do this, all the time, including American companies and government agencies. The common practice may be public relations involving a great deal of positive spin, but it is not bribery. As a rule, they place no restrictions on what you can report or write about.
But here’s Rogin’s response, broadcast to the world via Twitter: “Thanks for this offer but I am forbidden by Washington Post policies and also by personal ethics from taking thousands of dollars in gifts from a foreign corporation that acts as an arm of a foreign government intelligence agency.”
I am sure Huawei, even if it were completely corrupt, would not have been stupid enough to offer him “thousands of dollars”, and if it did, he would not have tweeted it, but wrote it up as a front-page story in The Washington Post.
Talk about reaching premature conclusions: “a foreign corporation that acts as an arm of a foreign government intelligence agency”. By the same token, Google, Apple and other big tech names must work for the FBI, CIA and NSA, too.
Not satisfied with broadcasting his principled rejection, Rogin wrote for the benefit of his Twitter followers: “Huawei is inviting me on an all-expenses-paid junket to China? That is gonna be a hard pass. Any American journalist who takes Huawei money should be ashamed and shamed.”
So, a junket offer has magically become bribe money. And he is accusing, before the fact, “any American journalist” who might make the trip to hear Huawei’s side of the story, or at least have a look-see for themselves, of taking a bribe!
As a reporter, my wife went on a junket to an aviation factory of Rolls-Royce in Derby, England. I was once offered junkets by Nasa and the Australian consulate in Hong Kong. Were they trying to bribe me?
It is a bit late for Huawei to be offering junkets. It may make great smartphones, but is pathetically inept at PR. At least Rogin has taught the firm what it’s up against with the US news media.
