True lies

Last night we went out for a drink. I was still outraged and upset. I ended up telling Stinky Monkey about some incidents that I saw with my own eyes:

When I was in Barcelona in the mid-March, I watched the news coverage about the Tibet riots in my hotel room. Some videos they showed were monks being dragged and beaten by – according to BBC – Chinese policemen. One glance at the screen made me wonder since when the Chinese policemen started to wear an army uniform, and I definitely do not recall that Chinese army even has a uniform in this kind of color. Then I noticed the dark skin color of these “policemen”, and became puzzled which area these people came from. Of course, later on, I found out these are not Chinese policemen but Nepal cops.

Then in Madrid, more news came in. One piece of video footages they used was from CCTV – a Chinese TV station, so I can hear the Chinese news reporter’s voice very well. The video footage described clearly in Chinese how policemen were helping out three female Japanese tourists. At the same time, the BBC news anchor stated that the video showed how policemen dragged Chinese. My jaw dropped.

Three days ago, when the brutality during the Olympic Torch Relay became headlines, CNN news anchor asked a CNN reporter to interview ordinary Chinese in Beijing. So the reporter asked a mid-aged lady on the street of Beijing whether she knew the torch relay in Paris. The woman replied in Chinese that she read it from the newspaper. The CNN reporter in Beijing then turned back and told the anchor – as well as the entire audience whoever watched the news at that moment – “no, there is no news coverage at all”.

It is the attitude that these mainstream media broadcasted their lies – and virtually fucked the brains of the entire audience right in front of them – that enraged me so much. They are in fact insulting not only the Chinese people, but also the people from other countries who do not speak or understand the other foreign languages.

Stinky Monkey then pondered why they dare to lie in the first place. I shook my head – “I do not know. But I can tell you another story.” A couple of years ago, when the news came out that China was awarded to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the local city TV station planned to interview Chinese students. One of my friends participated in the interview. The reporter asked how they felt about the news, and was obviously unhappy that everyone was expressing his/her excitement. Then the reporter interviewed one by one about human rights. My friend only had a chance to make one comment – which to date I still think is fair – that “everybody has his own understanding of human rights” – before the microphone was taken away. Obviously, they only want to hear what they want to hear, not the fact or the actual feelings.