What If There Was An Anti-Gov't Protest In China And No One Showed Up? Would Press Reports Use Other Photos?
from the looks-like-it dept
There has been some talk about how China is quite afraid of how the various anti-government protests in the Middle East might lead folks in China to try the same thing. In fact, there apparently had been something of a push outside the country to get Chinese citizens to participate in their own sort of "Jasmine Revolution," but at the time the whole thing was supposed to go down, apparently the only people who showed up were a ton of police and a whole lot of reporters. No actual protesters, though. Without protesters to bully, the police went after some reporters, but that was about it.However, Glyn Moody points us to a report noting that despite this being a near total non-event, it appears some publications around the world used photos from other events with their own news coverage to imply that they were actually from the "protests" in China. Here are a few examples, though there are a bunch more at the link. I was unable to confirm much of this, since I speak almost no Mandarin, and read even less (i.e., none) so if there are more details please feel free to let us know in the comments:
As mentioned, the link above has many more examples of this from a variety of other publications. The whole thing is pretty odd. Why would these publications bother putting up photos that have nothing to do with the event in question?
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Filed Under: china, journalism
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1) Experienced editor, who has become set in his ways and perhaps a little too entitled, thinks he can immediately figure out any story based on a couple lines of information.
2) Editor assigns that story to a writer along with a pre-conceived verbal outline of what the key points will be and what sort of sources, quotes & photos are needed.
3) Writer discovers that the story is not at all what it seemed like, and that the real story might be more interesting but will also require a lot more digging - or that the real story is no story at all, and barely worth a single paragraph.
4) Writer, working on a deadline, simply finds anything that fills in the blanks of the outline the editor gave them, and submits the story they are expected to write.
5) Editor sees the final story as exactly what he anticipated, thinks 'boy am I good' and pushes it through to publication with minimal review.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing all journalists and editors of this - nor am I even saying that all those who have ever found themselves caught in this cycle are thoroughly bad at what they do. But this is the sort of insidious procedural pattern that leads to so much of today's flimsy journalism.
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Re:
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Yeah, right.
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It is all about soap
I laugh every time some big media elitist drones on about 'journalistic integrity' and 'professional editors' being the differentiator between the 'pros' and the riff-raff of the blogosphere.
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"Few expected Chinese citizens to answer the "jasmine revolution" appeal, which urged them to express their desire for reform by "strolling" past a McDonald's on Wangfujing shopping street. Shanghai police used whistles to disperse a crowd of around 200, although it was unclear if the people were anything more than onlookers. Officers detained at least four Chinese citizens in the city and two others in Beijing. It was not clear, however, if those detained had tried to protest. A US journalist was punched and kicked in the face."
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"Jasmine Revolution"
True, there could be more freedom of speech in China, (and there is a modicum of free speech, especially on community issues) but the socioeconomic conditions in China right now make a "Jasmine Revolution" pretty unlikely. Whereas, the socioeconomic conditions in the West could easily create a "Jasmine Revolution" there.
The anti-Chinese bias in the "free press," especially the British press, is pretty astounding.
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The revolution will not be told-in-lies.
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In Beijing, police used street cleaner water sprayers to wash and re-wash the site of the supposed protest, alternating with police dogs and other dissuasive tactics. For the most part, the only people present were foreign journalists looking for the non-story.
It must be said that while Western people don't believe it, Chinese people are mostly happy with their lots in life, and are generally seeing much progress in their standards of living and such. They don't have time or the desire for an unneeded revolution.
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Re: D' accord
The NY Times had a fairly evenhanded report on the situation, which appeared on page 10 of the Times. One Chinese merchant interview at the scene thought the extra police presence had something to do with the meeting of the legislature, which began the same day.
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Trolling?
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Why would these publications bother putting up photos that have nothing to do with the event in question?
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Lame use of picture, but at least they are not reporting lies (at least not in the small amount of the article that can be seen).
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Regardless, I'm just happy I'm a Canadian able to enjoy life in Canada.
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