JEFF BEZOS WAS RIGHT to sack a large number of Washington Post staff last night, I’m sorry to say.
The paper yesterday booted out more than 300 staff in a mass culling of jobs.
Now before I am torn to shreds by my counterparts in the profession, let me add that I offer deep sympathy, on a personal level, for every individual who lost their jobs. I mean that. It’s a tough industry (I’ve been sacked from news outlets several times) and it always hurts to be shown the door.
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REDUCTIVE AND SHALLOW
But something else MUST be said specifically about the people in the section of Washington Post coverage that I am familiar with—the ones who produce reductive, hostile, nuance-free coverage of mainland China and Hong Kong. Their work has been extremely harmful to all sides, and it is very, very good thing for everyone that it may be over.
The sackings of these people give the world a chance to rise above the shallow anti-China narrative that has been used to trigger an arms race, and instead move towards a world characterized by healthy geopolitical relationships based on trade and mutual respect: in other words, peace and understanding.
You want evidence? I have evidence. Look at the coverage for yourself.
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'TENTACLE WRITING'
For example, China correspondent Katrina Northrop was sacked by the Washington Post yesterday.
For the readers of the Washington Post, she took the huge, complex, richly cultured, beautifully complex Chinese nation, and reduced it to a malevolent force in Beijing that could do nothing except reach out, tighten its grip, and create crackdowns on everything.
- Her story on finance: “What does Beijing’s tightening grip over Hong Kong mean for the world’s most valuable stock exchange?”
- Her story on the tragic Hong Kong tower blocks fire: “First came the fire. Then came the political crackdown.”
- Her story on the Chinese beauty industry: “Amid Botched procedures, Beijing is cracking down on cosmetic surgery”.
- Her story on politics in Taiwan: “On today’s Washington Post front page, our investigation into the murky mix of organized crime and politics allowing Beijing to extend its reach into Taiwan.”
- Her story on China’s amazing rise in AI: “How China is Using AI to Extend Censorship and Surveillance”.
Get the message? Everything is in the language of tentacles – Beijing reaching out, gripping, tightening, cracking down.
But let’s not be unfair to Ms Northrop, who may be a very nice person, and who writes very well. She was simply following the over-arching “west-good-China-bad” narrative of her industry, like her colleagues.
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AN AGGRESSIVE HOTEL?
Also sacked was Mike E Miller. In August last year, Miller lead-wrote an article in the Washington Post that reported that both China and the US were spending money on the island of Palau.
But he notably failed to highlight the fact that they were not doing the same thing at all. Chinese people were building a hotel to boost Palau’s tourism industry and employ locals. The US was building special harbors for warships for America’s planned war on China.
Incredibly, Miller’s article painted the Chinese as the aggressive ones! “China, which has the world’s largest navy, has been aggressively increasing its influence across the South China Sea and into the Western Pacific, seeking to becoming the predominant maritime power in a region the U.S. has long considered its domain,” he wrote.
How is a hotel designed to employ locals worse than a warship base? The Chinese-built tourist hotel, Mr Miller wrote, may be used to look at the US war preparations, he explained.
The cringeworthy level of bias was so transparent that a child could see through it. But he may be a nice person, just following orders.
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FALSE VISION OF HONG KONG
Also sacked was Shibani Mahtani, who wrote wildly negative articles about Hong Kong. Residents of the city know that their home is one of the richest, safest places in the world, and literally the healthiest city on earth, with a longevity level that beats Japan.
But in her hands, it came across as a nightmarish place where awful things happened to the innocent.
To take just one example, Jimmy Lai was kept in solitary confinement, she told the world, omitting the rather crucial fact that he requested it.
Her writing gave the impression that Lai’s trial was about free speech, as she chose to downplay the crucial fact that the heart of it was foreign collusion—and a huge amount of hard evidence of this was shown during the trial. I mean, Mike Pompeo’s office literally talked to Lai as the US passed laws and sanctions that did incredible harm to the innocent people of Hong Kong. Why not report that?
Lai printed a positive portrayal of the terrifying Dragon Slayers Brigade, who went on to gather terrorist-grade bombs and firearms to try to mass-murder innocent people in Wan Chai.
How do these things make Lai a hero, Ms Mahtani?
Again, she may be a nice person, just following orders. But I’m blessed with a large number of friends in Hong Kong, of all political leanings, and I don’t know a single one who is not horrified by the deeply unfair coverage of their city and their country by foreign correspondents working for the west against China.
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SHORTAGE OF JOURNALISTS
As for the journalists out of a job in this region, I have a suggestion.
The world has a massive shortage of journalists who can rise above Tentacle Writing (“crackdown”, “grip”, “tightening hold” “Beijing's reach”) and write intelligently and even-handedly about East Asia, with insight and nuance and balance and fairness and honesty, even to the Chinese. I refer to people who can create bridges instead of walls.
Why not try being one of those? The world needs you.
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