美媒监察组织批《纽约时报》患上“抨击中国综合征”

作者:light12  于 2021-1-31 21:26 发表于 最热闹的华人社交网络--贝壳村

通用分类:网络文摘

美媒监察组织批《纽约时报》患上“抨击中国综合征”


新冠疫情暴发以来,中国已成功控制住疫情。但在武汉“封城”一周年的节骨眼上,包括《纽约时报》在内,不少自诩独立、客观和公正的西方媒体,却纷纷发布各种“阴阳怪气”、“春秋笔法”专题报道。

对此,美国媒体批评和监察组织“FAIR.org”编辑吉姆·诺雷卡斯(Jim Naureckas)当地时间1月29日发表一篇题为《纽约时报的“(抨击)中国综合征”》的评论,拆穿了《纽约时报》歪曲中国疫情应对和成果所使用的伎俩,并直言这家报纸和特朗普一样,“知道将中国列为可怕威胁后的政治宣传价值”。

例如,《纽约时报》近期报道中曾暗示中国“宣传疫情处置能力高于美国”,但诺雷卡斯列出数据后指出,现实情况也确实如此。

另一篇报道中,《纽约时报》又在头版通过照片渲染中国香港疫情的恐怖程度,但诺雷卡斯又问道:“为什么要将地球另一端,规模相对较小的疫情当成头版新闻?”

FAIR.org评论文章《纽约时报的“(抨击)中国综合征”》

其实,类似的“中国综合征”不仅仅只出现在西方媒体关于中国疫情的报道中,也不仅仅只存在于《纽约时报》一家西方媒体。

“客观来说,中国的疫情应对确实远远好于美国”

本篇评论文章的开头,诺雷卡斯就向读者提问:若在平行时空中,美国在两个月内控制住了新冠病毒,而中国仍在与之斗争,一年之后,数十万人死亡。此时,中国一份重要报纸发表了一篇文章,论述美国在新冠肺炎大流行中“试图掩盖其失误”。

“你会对这种宣传渠道,以及那些为了转移人们对自己国家失败的注意力而进行所谓的透明努力的新闻调查有多大的蔑视呢?”诺雷卡斯质问道。

而这,正是《纽约时报》如今在做的事情。诺雷卡斯提到了《纽约时报》1月10日宣称“中国掩盖疫情应对失误”的报道,并对其中一段文字进行分析。

《纽约时报》在那篇文章中这么写道:“过去一年的大部分时间里,中国一直在试图将疫情描述为共产党领导下一场无可争议的胜利。官方新闻媒体在很大程度上忽略了政府的失误,并将中国的应对描述为其体制优越性的证明,尤其是与美国和其他民主国家相比,后者仍在努力遏制疫情的肆虐。”

诺雷卡斯批评说,这是一段“令人困惑”的文字,因为《纽约时报》在此暗示,中国是在宣传自己的疫情相比于美国,“是一场无可争议的胜利。”

但事实也确实如此。诺雷卡斯在文中列出一系列数据:中国有14亿人口,确诊病例不到9万例,而美国有3.3亿人口,到目前为止已经有超过2500万例病例。中国有不到5000名新冠死亡病例,而美国的这一数字为43.3万人。2020年,中国GDP增长2.3%,美国萎缩2.5%。

他写道:“鉴于这些现实情况,难怪中国认为自己应对新冠肺炎的能力远远好于美国——因为客观地说,确实如此。”

《纽约时报》报道中宣称中国应对新冠疫情初期有失误,给出的依据是武汉“封城”之前,共有17人死于新冠肺炎。但诺雷斯卡再次指出,仅在美国面积最小州之一的新罕布什尔,1月28日当天就有16人死于新冠肺炎。

此外,诺雷卡斯还戳穿了《纽约时报》的伎俩,报道中曾将“美国和其他民主国家”列为中国比较的国家,但他认为这是一种“转移人们注意力的方式”。美国和许多盟友一样,遭受疫情冲击,但也有不少发达国家情况相对较好,因此这并非政治体制的问题,而是应对新冠疫情认真与否的问题。

“《纽约时报》和特朗普一样,知道将中国列为威胁的宣传价值”

《纽约时报》关于中国疫情的报道和评论文章中,还有很多“奇文”。例如,该报今年1月24日刊发美国美国对外关系委员会全球卫生高级研究员黄严忠一篇题为《中国在抗击新冠疫情方面是否做得太好了?》的文章,“角度刁钻”地批评了中国在全球新冠疫情中的角色。

《纽约时报》刊发的黄严忠“奇文”:《中国在抗击新冠疫情方面是否做得太好了?》

例如,黄严忠文中提到的一个所谓论点是,中国的防疫做得太好,以至于让部分人似乎因为错误的安全感,不愿接种疫苗。他援引调查机构益索普(Ipsos)针对15个国家的调查数据,称大约有80%的中国受访者表示愿意接种疫苗,不愿意接种的人中有70%提到了疫苗的副作用。还有约32%对接种犹豫不决的中国受访者表示,他们不愿接种的主要原因是“新冠风险不够大”,这是所有受访国家中比例最高的。

但诺雷卡斯指出,黄严忠在此处刻意隐藏了部分信息,在益索普所有15个国家的数据中,中国愿意接种疫苗的比例其实是最高的,高于美国的69%,也高于法国的40%。

与此同时,美国和法国的疫情应对做的也相对不好。诺雷卡斯说,同样在1月28日,一个人在美国感染新冠病毒的激烈高达两千分之一,而在中国感染的几率可能低至一千万分之一。因此中国人感到感染风险低,是有充分理由的。

诺雷卡斯最后举的例子,是《纽约时报》1月25日的纸质报头版文章。当天,报纸头版放着一张“不祥”的照片,照片上的人穿着防护服,站在警戒线后面,上面写着“不要越过”,标题是《又一波新冠病毒袭击香港》。

诺雷卡斯提到的《纽约时报》头版关于香港疫情的照片和报道

但诺雷卡斯批评说,香港的人口约为750万人,而这所谓的“又一波新冠病毒”,指的是香港每天有约75人感染病毒。但在《纽约时报》总部所在的纽约市,每天约有4000人感染。因此,《纽约时报》头版上可怕的照片和说明完全没有提到香港疫情的严重程度大约是纽约正常情况的五十分之一。

诺雷卡斯在文章最后自问自答道:“为什么要把世界另一端,规模相对较小的新冠疫情作为《纽约时报》的头版新闻?就像特朗普一样,《纽约时报》知道将中国列为可怕威胁背后的政治宣传价值。”

当然,这样的情况不仅仅局限于《纽约时报》关于中国疫情的报道。就如该报近期的另一渲染中国“太空威胁”的报道一样,诺雷卡斯评论说,文章援引了一群供职于军工业资助智库的退休将军,以中国为借口,目的是宣传美国太空部队的正当性。

其他西方媒体也深谙此道。例如,英国广播公司(BBC)近期推出一系列“重返湖北”视频报道,也不出所料夹带私货。

一则视频中,BBC记者沙磊(John Sudworth)搬出所谓“武汉实验室泄露病毒”的传言,再配上他在中科院武汉病毒研究所外被保安“拒之门外”的画面,西方媒体口中“掩盖疫情”的场景就这么描绘出来了。


JANUARY 29, 2021
NYT’s China Syndrome
New York Times depiction of an exhibit in Wuhan commemorating the first anniversary of the Covid lockdown.

 

Imagine a parallel world where the US brought Covid under control in two months, while China still struggled with it, a year and hundreds of thousands of deaths later.

And in this alternative universe, a leading Chinese paper runs an article on the US’s “efforts to hide its missteps” in the Covid pandemic.

What kind of contempt would you have for that propaganda outlet, and for so-called journalists who would engage in such a transparent effort to distract from their own nation’s failures?

NYT: A Year After Wuhan, China Tells a Tale of Triumph (and No Mistakes)

“China’s leaders have little interest in dwelling on the past or revisiting their mistakes,” say journalists from a much smaller country where 87 times as many people have now died from Covid (New York Times1/10/21).

Well, that’s how you should feel about our own world’s New York Times, which ran an article (1/10/21) with the subhead, “The Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to hide its missteps have taken on new urgency as the anniversary of the world’s first Covid-19 lockdown nears.” The article, by Amy Qin and Javier C. Hernández, went on to say:

China has spent much of the past year trying to spin the narrative of the pandemic as an undisputed victory led by the ruling Communist Party. The state-run news media has largely ignored the government’s missteps and portrayed China’s response as proof of the superiority of its authoritarian system, especially compared to that of the United States and other democracies, which are still struggling to contain raging outbreaks.

It’s a puzzling passage, suggesting as it does that it’s “spin” to portray China’s Covid response as an “undisputed victory…compared to that of the United States.” Let’s do that comparison:

  • China, a country of 1.4 billion people, has had just under 90,000 confirmed cases of Covid. The US, with a population of 330 million, has so far had more than 25 million cases.
  • In China, less than 5,000 people have died from Covid, a little more than 3 out of every million people. In the US, it’s 433,000, more than 1 out of every thousand people.
  • China is now averaging between one and two deaths from Covid per day. The United States’ current one-week average is 3,258 per day.
  • China’s GDP grew by 2.3% in 2020, while the US’s shrank by 2.5%.

Given these realities, it’s no wonder China thinks it has responded to the coronavirus far better than the US has—because, objectively, it has.

The genuinely remarkable thing is that the New York Times, the US’s most prestigious newspaper, has devoted considerable resources to investigating why China didn’t address the pandemic even more quickly and effectively than it did (FAIR.org10/14/20,  1/20/21). These exposés of China’s “missteps” generally boil down to Beijing not taking the virus seriously enough before January 23, 2020, when it put the entire city of Wuhan in quarantine—at which point the virus had been implicated in 17 deaths.

To put that in perspective, there were 16 deaths from Covid yesterday just in New Hampshire, the US’s 10th smallest state.

The Times‘ specifying “the United States and other democracies” as the group of countries China is comparing itself to is a bit of a red herring. While it’s true that many US allies weathered the pandemic as poorly as the US did, there are several wealthy countries with multi-party political systems that did far better—including New Zealand, South Korea, Australia, Japan, Iceland, Norway and Finland. So the disparity is not so much between “authoritarian” states and “democracies,” as the Times suggests, as between countries that took the coronavirus seriously and those that didn’t.

 

Total deaths from Covid-19 normalized by population, selected countries

(Source: 91-DIVOC)

The advantages of mass death
NYT: Has China Done Too Well Against Covid-19?

“China’s comparative success now risks hurting the country,” an apparently non-satirical New York Times op-ed (12/29/20) argued.

If maintaining that China’s Covid response wasn’t really all that great doesn’t seem plausible, maybe you could argue that it was too good? That was the actual argument of a New York Times op-ed (1/24/20), headlined “Has China Done Too Well Against Covid-19?”

The main evidence presented by author Yanzhong Huang that China was suffering from not enough people dying is that it is “over-exporting vaccines made in China in a bid to expand its influence internationally.” By this, Huang means that China is sending many of the doses it manufactures to places like Brazil, where a thousand people are killed by Covid every day, rather than keeping most of them at home, where Covid kills one or two people each day. If only the Chinese people had experienced mass death like we did to teach them the value of hoarding.

Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, also claims that in China, “the population feels much safer than it should.” He cites as evidence a cross-national Ipsos survey (12/29/20) that found that just 80% of respondents in China would take a Covid vaccine if one were available. Huang doesn’t mention that that was the highest positive response rate among the 15 countries polled—compared to 69% in the US and only 40% in France, countries that have certainly not suffered from doing too well against Covid.

But, Huang points out, of the 20% disinclined to get vaccinated, 32% say it’s because they are not at enough risk from Covid. Of course, a third of one-fifth is less than 7% of the population, which hardly seems like enough to make one regret not having more Covid deaths. It’s similar to the fraction of people in the US who say they wouldn’t take a vaccine because they aren’t at risk enough, despite the advantage Americans have had of a 400,000+ death toll. But Chinese people who think that their risk of catching Covid is low are on solid ground, statistically: In the United States, your chances of coming down with Covid yesterday were about 1 in 2,000, whereas in China, they were 1 in 10,000,000.

The value of a scary danger
NYT: New Wave of Covid Hits Hong Kong

The New York Times (1/25/21) treated it as front-page news when Hong Kong reached the same number of daily Covid cases as the Brighton Beach zip code in Brooklyn.

Too good or not good enough, China’s coronavirus response is an obsession of the New York Times. On January 25, the front page of the Times‘ print edition was dominated by an ominous above-the-fold photo of people in protective gear behind police tape reading “DO NOT CROSS,” with a caption headline “Another Wave of Covid-19 Hits Hong Kong.” This “wave” consisted of residents of Hong Kong (population 7.5 million) coming down with Covid at the rate of 75 a day—whereas in New York City (population 8.4 million), people are catching it at the rate of about 4,000 a day. But the context that Hong Kong’s outbreak was roughly 1/50th as bad as what’s considered business as usual in the Times‘ hometown was entirely missing from the scary photo and caption on the paper’s front page.

Why make a relatively tiny outbreak of the coronavirus on the other side of the world front-page news at the New York Times? Like Donald Trump, the paper is certainly aware of the propaganda value of pointing to China as a scary danger—as illustrated by an ostensibly unrelated story adjacent on the same front page, with the print headline “US Counters Space Threat From China.” In that article, a gaggle of retired generals, now at weapons industry–funded think tanks, used Beijing to make the case that maybe Space Force wasn’t such a wacky idea after all.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

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Jim NaureckasJim Naureckas

Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org, and has edited FAIR's print publication Extra! since 1990. He is the co-author of The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader. He was an investigative reporter for In These Times and managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere. Born in Libertyville, Illinois, he has a poli sci degree from Stanford. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR’s program director.

 


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