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'Chinese Netizens...Are Fighting Back'
China Accuses Western Media of Distorted Reporting on the Riots in Tibet
Reporter's Notebook By STEPHANIE SY
BEIJING, March 26, 2008 —
China isn't particularly known for prizing free speech.
But in the weeks since riots in Tibet broke out and Chinese troops clamped down on them, many Chinese have found their voice. It is loud, angry and aimed at us.
"Us" being Western journalists who have reported on the Tibet protests and the ensuing political fallout. ABC News' office in Beijing has received dozens of calls from all over China berating Western media's "biased" reports.
The backlash appears organized around an Internet propaganda campaign that some suggest the Chinese government is secretly feeding.
Since Friday, a new Web site called Anti-CNN.com has been documenting what it sees as distorted foreign media coverage. CNN has been the focus of protest, even though CNN is not available in the vast majority of Chinese homes.
-CCTV每个美国人家里都有么?
Bloggers were the first to point out that CNN.com was running an Agence France-Presse photo of a Chinese military vehicle that cropped out the Tibetan protesters throwing rocks at the vehicle.
The cropped photo, juxtaposed with the original photo, quickly spread through the Chinese blogosphere as supposed proof of the Western media bias.
Other photos on the Web site show reportedly misleading headlines and captions -- one dispatch describes a Chinese crackdown, but shows Nepalese or Indian troops beating protesters.
A German television station issued an apology for using pictures in the wrong context, and other Web sites have made changes to their captions.
And a front-page story on the English-language China Daily read "Chinese citizens & are fighting back to discredit often distorted, and sometimes dishonest, reports by Western media."
The Chinese are getting an inadvertent taste of the power of free speech to effect change. But how free is it?
A few days after the unrest, when global media attention was shining a bright spotlight on China's policies in Tibet, China's state-run television network, CCTV, aired a 15-minute documentary showing the Chinese version of the riots.
The documentary was wallpapered with footage of Tibetans rampaging through Lhasa and carried emotional interviews with Chinese who had lost loved ones, injured victims and distressed shopkeepers who had been looted.
This was the only version of events people in China saw. Even those who can understand English and might have been illegally receiving CNN or BBC would have seen their screens switch to black by government censors almost every time a report about Tibet was aired.
--现在的故事无非只有2个版本,西方的版本和中国的版本。在中国主要看到的是中国的版本,在西方主要看到的是西方的版本。如果真的是新闻自由,美国人民就能看到中国的版本了。另外CNN和BBC在中国非法?是无知还是无耻?
As Jamie Metzl, the executive vice president of the Asia Society, said in a phone interview, "While the Chinese government is trying to tell a story internally within China for Chinese consumption that tells only of the victimization of the ethnic Chinese in Tibet, that one-sided story isn't going to fly internationally and so China is going to need to show a greater sensitivity to both sides of this conflict."
--如果美国的摩门教在70年代拿了苏联的钱,武装攻击本地的联邦政府,你能说是宗教问题么?如果dl没有拿西方的钱,怎么能组织这次恐怖主义袭击。请举出以前汉藏互相敌对攻击的例子。
But as much as China has allowed its citizens to vent their frustration at Western journalists this week, it still hasn't allowed a public discourse on why many Tibetans felt the need to rise up in the first place.
--刚刚开的人大就这样的Public Disourse的法定场所。你们要说的和平游行有存在的证据么?
And surprisingly, the accompanying conversations about ethnic tensions that would normally arise in a society after such ethnically charged riots have not occurred in China.
Instead, the State Council held a news conference today featuring Tibetan scholars, one of whom told incredulous reporters, "Relations between ethnic groups in Lhasa are extremely harmonious."
If China wonders why its version of what happened in Tibet is not wholly believed, perhaps it is because of statements like that, which undermine its overall credibility.
--本来如此,受到伤害的汉人也所原先和藏人的关系很好。几百个拿了dl的钱的暴徒不能说明几百万藏民的意愿。
A Chinese caller to our office asked the other day, "Why do you people believe what the Dalai Lama says? Why don't you believe what China says?"
It's a simple question with a difficult answer. First, as journalists, we try to hear what all sides are saying and fashion what we believe to be the closest thing to the truth from that.
--请问你们什么时候考虑过中国的观点?如果我在美国的大街上随班问10个人,能有一个了解中国的官方观点的么?这就是新闻自由么?
But how do you start a conversation when you're working with such different premises?
In China, the Dalai Lama is regularly portrayed as an illegitimate leader, a fraud, even a criminal. But in the rest of the world, the Tibetan spiritual leader is a respected Nobel Peace Prize winner on par with Mother Theresa for his humanitarianism. That is part of it. Perhaps both sides are biased. On the other hand, it somehow comes down to the powerful versus the oppressed.
--中国的官方说法是dl是非法领袖,骗子和罪犯?他是50年以前,西藏奴隶制社会的领导者,这是不错的。他和他的手下在50年以前可以为了一个点粮食就可以砍掉农奴的脑袋,这就是你的人道主义?作为一个新闻工作者,你不知道诺贝尔和平奖是政治性的?
As my colleague pointed out, "The Dalai Lama doesn't have an army."
他有过军队,CIA培训的,请注意。
这个网站真的很难上。。。。。
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