ZT:"A Reporter's Guide to Covering the Olympics"
Copied from [url]http://time-blog.com/china_blog/2008/07/a_reporters_guide_to_covering.html?xid=rss-china[/url]" found "atthe back of a sofa in the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) common roomin Hong Kong.
" “Reporter Guidelines for Covering the Beijing Olympics.
1) On arrival, set the scene by saying a few nice things about theinfrastructure—the high rises and the multilane highways, theinterchanges. Developmenty sort of stuff.
2) Make an amusing, self-deprecating comment about your inability tospeak or read the funny language they have in China. Play down the factthat you are dependent on a translator for quotes and newspaperreading. Never admit in print to getting story ideas or borrowingquotes from the China Daily.
3) Get story ideas and borrow quotes from the China Daily. Make sureyou do this discreetly. For background only.
4) Now for reportage. After saying the nice things about the newbuildings, get your translator to find a Beijing yam seller whose slumwas knocked down to make way for the Olympic badminton hall. Do a fewparas on him, and how all the money thrown at the Games is not helpingthe poor, and how terrible the huge income gap is. Make sure you writeat least three times as much about the yam seller whose slum was pulleddown as you do about all the new apartments, new metro lines, thegrowth in car ownership, the expanding health insurance and all theother good news about China that nobody in the west really wants toknow about.
5) Say how horrible the air in Beijing is, even if it isn’t on the daysyou are there. Everybody says Beijing air is horrible, so play along.
6) The political bit. Interview a token party member, but reword himsubtly to make it sound like he is just spouting the party line. Bendthe translator’s words to fit—it’ll be rubbish English anyway. (Dittoin all quote treatment). Then find a good Chinese, one who is fluent inEnglish, has lived in America or Britain, and is prodemocracy. Givethem lots of space, let them sing. Martin Lee types, but preferablyyounger and female, for the mugshot. If you can get an interview withthe Olympic artist, Ai-whatsisname, who is an anti-Commie quotemachine, give him full throttle. Hopefully, he hasn’t been arrestedyet.Lastly, please remember: Chinese who love their country are called“nationalists.” Never use this word for Americans, French, Tibetans andother civilized peoples who love their country or territory. Whendemonstrators protest over Tibet they are acting in a heartfelt,spontaneous way, waving pretty flags you would be happy to see woveninto your granny’s bedspread. When Chinese counter-demonstrate, theyare always “bussed in,” the mood is “ugly”, and they are draped inintimidating red flags that can be made to look a bit Hitler Jugend-ishwith the right kind of photo. (They probably did arrive in buses asthis is the cheapest way of moving numbers of not-very-well-off peoplearound, but you don’t need to prove the insinuation that the regimelaid on the vehicles). Beijing is always a “regime,” by the way, and isnot to be confused with western “governments.” (But: Hong Kong is anexception. Because it was under benign, enlightened Britishdictatorship for a long time, it cannot be a “regime.” “Regime” onlyapplies to dictatorships in rubbish countries).
That’s about it. Don’t be deceived by all that friendly smiling andoptimism, that’s just a front. It’s your job, with your long days ofexperience of the Far East and your fluency in a language spoken bynearly 0.005% of the locals, to get under the radar and ferret out thetruth. Did I mention how bad the air in Beijing is?”
" You copied it from Time/CNN; can I find the same kind of joking (in the opposite direction) on China Daily? Does it say something to you? why are all first posts being hidden?? [quote]Original posted by [i]lucidus[/i] at 4-8-2008 15:41 [url=http://www.anti-cnn.com/forum/en/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=19895&ptid=2420][img]http://www.anti-cnn.com/forum/en/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]
Copied from [url=http://time-blog.com/china_blog/2008/07/a_reporters_guide_to_covering.html?xid=rss-china]http://time-blog.com/china_blog/2008/07/a_reporters_guide_to_covering.html?xid=rss-china[/url]
" found "at the back of a sofa in the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) common room in Hong Kong.
... [/quote]
He he. Really good satire of Western media bias. :lol This text is funny!
Suanla, maybe you can't find this kind of stuff because Chinese media tend to be polite to other countries? They hardly criticize others so you can't make this kind of joke... what I am saying is that in our "biased " media you can find as well some articles against westerners...it is called free press...can I find an article on chinese media joking about Hu Jintao for example?
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