Journalists from six countries of the world have lamented the spate and wave of deliberate disinformation against China, especially since the pandemic of 2020 is on its own a pandemic.
The journalists voiced their discontent over the development during an online forum Insights & Impact held by CGTN on Friday, January 13.
The six media practitioners debunked Western anti-China bias and shared their views on the media’s responsibilities in the global response to COVID-19.
Since the very beginning of the pandemic, the Western media has criticized China’s anti-virus policy. In Western media coverage, China’s dynamic zero-COVID policy is a failure. What’s the actual situation in China?
“I spent most of my time in China from 2020 to around mid-last year… I can tell you without fear of contradiction that it (‘dynamic zero-COVID’ policy) is the most effective policy in protecting lives,” Mubarak Mugabo of Uganda The New Vision said at the forum.
Minea, Cambodia Khmer Times
Lending his voice to the discourse, Son Minea from Cambodia’s Khmer Times said that “in the early stages of the outbreak, China adopted strong public health intervention measures. I believe that those measures have allowed the country to open up today. “The dynamic zero-COVID” policy, in Minea’s view, did little interruptions on his adventures in China. “I had the most beautiful time in China, enjoying a lot of places in Beijing like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City,” Minea said.
Fortune Abang of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) described China’s handling of COVID-19 as “laudable” as the country had put effective mechanisms in place to contain the virus and prevent people from infections.
When the pandemic first appeared, China took immediate steps to halt the spread of the virus, which Western media outlets criticized. Within months, the virus had been eliminated in the country. China then adopted its “dynamic zero-COVID” policy to control the spread and save lives, which the Western media also criticized. And now that China has re-opened, the Western media claim it’s too soon and China’s COVID response has failed. This is like a double standard.”
Mugabo, however, opined that Western criticisms are not about policies, but about China. “China has to look bad at all costs. Unfortunately, the Western media has the narrative to depict China in a negative way.”
Tristan Duterte Nodalo at CNN Philippines also acknowledged the disconnect between the real situation in China and Western media reports on the country. He noted that first-hand information is crucial in reporting. “It’s different when just writing about China from the Philippines… and writing about China when I am in China,” he explained.
Since China refined its COVID policies in December, the Western media has blamed China for a “lack of preparation” and the “extreme pressure” on the Chinese medical system. Eric Biegon of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation said “China has mobilized resources nationwide to secure people’s safety in the pandemic. The Chinese have been satisfied with their country’s policies in the past three years, and this is not easy for a vast nation with over 1.4 billion people.”
Speaking further on this, Minea challenged that “people from other countries can feel free to criticize what Chinese authorities have been doing, but it’s absolutely unreasonable to do it without putting it into different contexts, especially considering that China is the world’s most populous country.”
Muhammad Assadi of the Independent News Agency of Pakistan is persuaded that China being discussed by the international community is “good news” as this shows the country’s significant role in the world.
Journalists at the forum agreed on the significance of “fact-checks” in media coverage. “However, we are not just facing a pandemic, but also an “infodemic” as fake news keeps spreading on the Internet throughout the pandemic, Nodalo said.
