China on Thursday snubbed an apology from CNN over remarks by one of its commentators as a wave of verbal assaults on foreign media raised concerns over coverage at this summer’s Beijing Olympics.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu rejected CNN’s explanation that commentator Jack Cafferty was referring to China’s leaders — not the Chinese people — when he described them as a ”bunch of goons and thugs”. CNN said it apologised to anyone who thought otherwise.
”Their statement did not make sincere apology for his remarks but turned its attack on the Chinese government to try to sow division between the Chinese government and the people. So for this point, we cannot accept it at all,” Jiang said at a regularly scheduled news conference.
The head of the ministry’s information department summoned CNN’s bureau chief in Beijing on Wednesday night to deliver a near-identical protest.
Chinese at home and abroad have heatedly accused Western media of biased coverage of violent anti-government protests in Tibet and across western China last month.
United States-based CNN has been singled out by the government and unknown Chinese activists who have phoned and emailed death threats to Western reporters. Most of the criticism against the network concerns a single photograph posted on its website weeks ago in which Tibetans throwing stones at Chinese security forces were cropped out.
Numerous web postings, YouTube videos and Facebook groups have criticised the Tibet news coverage, including a website called Anti-cnn.com, which was set up especially to point out alleged media bias.
Anger has been further stirred by high-profile protests among Tibetans, free-speech advocates and others dogging the Beijing Olympic torch’s passage through London and Paris.
Limited reach
CNN and other foreign satellite channels can be seen only in hotels, offices and housing developments open to foreigners, meaning very few Chinese would have heard Cafferty’s original comments.
Censors also block many foreign news sites on the internet, which points to an underlying irony of the protests: they profess outrage over foreign media reports that the government does not permit the public to view.
The entirely state-controlled media have joined in the vilification campaign, with the criticisms of CNN featuring prominently in Thursday’s newspapers and TV shows.
A signed editorial in the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper attacked what it called Cafferty’s ”verbal violence”.
”When people wake up and face the facts, there will be no more market for ‘information terrorism’,” the editorial said.
The vilification of Western media has renewed concerns about media controls during the Olympics, when thousands of foreign reporters are expected to be in Beijing to cover the August Games. Beijing has pledged to meet past standards for coverage, but has repeatedly violated those promises by detaining journalists and banning them from parts of the country.
On Wednesday, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists said it was concerned by the threats against journalists and ”an increase in violations of promises to let media work without interference”.
”It’s time to lower the temperature and start talking about making journalism safer and take reporters out of the political crossfire,” IFJ general secretary Aidan White said.
The Foreign Ministry’s Jiang said China would honour commitments made over the Olympics and ”facilitate the coverage and reporting work of foreign media in China”.
Yet she also said that the Communist leadership, which maintains a stranglehold on all domestic media, expects reporters to ”uphold the principle of objectivity, balance and fairness so by their concrete action to show their professional ethics of journalism”. — Sapa-AP