{"id":218387,"date":"2022-08-22T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=218387"},"modified":"2022-08-22T09:56:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T08:56:56","slug":"this-media-empire-leads-the-charge-in-the-us-china-propaganda-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/08\/this-media-empire-leads-the-charge-in-the-us-china-propaganda-war\/","title":{"rendered":"This Media Empire Leads the Charge in the US-China Propaganda War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rupert Murdoch\u2019s myriad of outlets makes concerted efforts to support anti-Beijing narratives.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Rupert Murdoch introduces Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Herman Kahn Award Gala, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019, in New York. Pompeo received the Hudson Institute’s 2019 Herman Kahn Award. \u00a9 AP Photo\/Mary Altaffer<\/p><\/div>\n

19 Aug 2022 – <\/em>Australian-born American billionaire, Rupert Murdoch\u2019s global media empire has consistently led the charge in pushing anti-China narratives in the Western media. Encompassing a long list of highly influential media, including both television and print media in the liberal and conservative camps, the list of talking points aimed at Beijing is immense.<\/p>\n

\n

For example, The Wall Street Journal\u2019s Editorial Board argued<\/a> on Monday that China \u201cis paying for the Communist Party chief\u2019s policy mistakes,<\/em>\u201d referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. The editorial argues that the world economy, including China\u2019s, is slowing down and that<\/p>\n

\u201cthe latest data released Monday on China\u2019s ebbing growth will echo around the world<\/em>\u201d because \u201cthe response from Beijing suggests its leaders are running out of ideas to arrest the decline.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The piece goes on to bemoan China\u2019s \u201cdynamic zero-Covid<\/em>\u201d policy, which has objectively saved millions of lives and made China\u2019s supply chains resilient and reliable for global investors.<\/p>\n

It did not mention, for example, a January report<\/a> by Citigroup, based on three surveys conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce China, the EU Chamber of Commerce China and the Japan External Trade Organization, that found that all three put China as their favorite investment spot specifically because of its COVID-19 containment strategy.<\/p>\n

The WSJ\u2019s editorial also took aim at a \u201ccrackdown on real-estate speculation\u201d<\/em> that is apparently hurting average people as property prices drop. It notes, \u201cProperty is the main source of savings for many Chinese families.<\/em>\u201d It, however, does not mention that soaring property prices, first of all, show all the unhealthy characteristics of a bubble \u2013 but are also pricing young people out of home-ownership all over the world.<\/p>\n

In fact, the WSJ doesn\u2019t even go into specifics to cite Beijing\u2019s response to its economic challenges besides saying \u201cmonetary stimulus.<\/em>\u201d One simple starting point could have been a report from the Central Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China\u2019s meeting on July 28<\/a> that touched on these exact same issues, including what the WSJ cited as a demand-side issue.<\/p>\n

Coupled with what the routine coverage of China by Murdoch-owned print media looks like, one can\u2019t help but feel like it\u2019s all done on purpose. Let me give some more notable examples.<\/p>\n

How about when the Murdoch-owned New York Post published<\/a> a column by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley that bizarrely claimed America was adopting \u201csocial credit scores<\/em>\u201d as \u201cthe latest corporate import from Communist China\u201d<\/em> despite the fact that not only is there no all-encompassing Orwellian social credit system in America, there isn\u2019t even one in China \u2013 as Vincent Brussee<\/a>, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, argues.<\/p>\n

Or, not to be outdone by its sister publication, when the WSJ printed an opinion column in October 2021 \u2013 this time giving<\/a>\u00a0air to the infamous lab-leak origin theory of COVID-19. Los Angeles Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Hiltzik masterfully dismantled<\/a> this propaganda piece, noting that the two authors of the WSJ piece are not even trained virologists.<\/p>\n

“The Wall Street Journal opinion section has a desire to portray China as a sinister entity, and the pandemic has been a superlative cudgel for use against a country that has emerged as a potent threat to America’s worldwide economic primacy,”<\/em> Hiltzik concluded, adding that such pieces would only embarrass the WSJ\u2019s serious journalists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s hard to discern exactly which serious journalists Hiltzik might have been referring to, however, because when it comes to China, the Murdoch media relies on the likes of Wenxin Fan<\/a> or Didi Tang<\/a>, with The WSJ and The Times of London respectively, who carry water for American imperialism by spreading the narratives of \u201cFreedom for Hong Kong\u201d<\/a><\/em> or \u201cUygur Genocide.\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s all the more sinister about Murdoch-owned media, as was learned in a May 2020 report<\/a> by the Sydney Morning Herald, is the entire symbiotic complex that surrounds the narratives they push. That report found the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph in Australia ran a report based<\/a> on a 15-page \u201cdossier\u201d<\/em> ostensibly leaked from an intelligence agency, allegedly showing that China destroyed documents related to the coronavirus in Wuhan, but the \u2018dossier\u2019 was found to be highly suspicious and apparently based on all-public information, without any intelligence services\u2019 involvement.<\/p>\n

Notably, this news report was picked up and used by US national security figureheads and sparked serious political debate in Australia and the US. We are now not even talking about misinforming the general public, but actual government officials and people with power. It goes to show the damage that disinformation can do to society \u2013 and why people should think twice before consuming it.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bradley Blankenship is an American journalist, columnist and political commentator. He has a syndicated column at <\/em>CGTN and is a freelance reporter for international news agencies including <\/em>Xinhua News Agency.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 rt.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Aug 2022 – Australian-born American billionaire Rupert Murdoch\u2019s global media empire has consistently led anti-China narratives in the Western media. Encompassing a long list of influential–both television and print–media, the list of talking points aimed at Beijing is immense.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":218388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2753,244,463,1138,1748,1284,1126,1050,234,2915,2571,372,70,1365,481,2110],"class_list":["post-218387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-agent-provocateur","tag-china","tag-corporate-empires","tag-fake-news","tag-fake-report","tag-false-flag","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-media","tag-media-empire","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-propaganda","tag-usa","tag-war-journalism","tag-warfare","tag-yellow-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}