The Communist Chinese government-run People’s Daily website posted on Friday an article claiming that it is not just President Donald Trump who is dealing with fake news about him from the liberal media.
China is also a victim of fake news, particularly that which is promoted by the media in the West, the article alleged.
“[It]is not just Trump who has been abused by the news media,” the article said. “A recent paper found that U.S. coverage of Muslims and refugees is predominantly negative as well.”
“Furthermore, the Western media has a strong anti-China bias, often exaggerating the country’s negative aspects while downplaying the positives,” the article states. “In fact, China has been on the receiving end of Western media bias and wrong stereotypes for years, unfairly tarnishing its hard-won image on the world stage.”
“The reason for some of the bias is because the Western media is trying to catch viewers’ eyes, other times it is because of ulterior political motives by some individuals and organizations,” the article said. “As the largely negative Trump coverage clearly shows, the U.S. media does take sides for various reasons.”
“In the case of China, the examples are endless,” the article states. “Countless stories and opinions try to cast China as a threat or a devil on the world stage, from CNN’s distortion of facts in covering the riot in Lhasa in March 2008, capital of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, to how the situation of the country’s millions of Chinese Muslims are discussed, many stories do not present China fairly and accurately.”
The issue of “fake news” in biased American media outlets has attracted much interest this week following an investigation by Breitbart News that forced CNN to retract a “fake news” story in which the network made the objectively false claim that a Trump adviser had dealings with the Russian government.
CNN published the following retraction:
“On June 22, 2017, CNN.com published a story connecting Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund,” CNN said in a statement late Friday night. “That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.”
The People’s Daily article suggests that capitalism is to blame for this problem, as networks must consider profit in how they report stories. Outlets in China like the People’s Daily, in contrast, must only take into consideration the whims of the Communist Party, which leads to much of its reporting consisting of vitriolic statements against the West. The newspaper concludes that, while there is “good reporting” on China, it is also the victim of “media bias and stereotypes.”