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Hu leads China's Fox News
November 3, 2011 9:06 PM Subscribe

China’s Fox News: Meet "Global Times", the angry Chinese government mouthpiece that makes Bill O'Reilly seem fair and balanced.
posted by vidur (14 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite

that makes Bill O'Reilly seem fair and balanced.

No indeed it does not.
posted by wilful at 9:21 PM on November 3, 2011

"that makes Bill O'Reilly seem fair and balanced."

Great. He's just gonna feel like he has to up the ante, now.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:24 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

No no no, the rest of the Fox news people already exist to make O'Reilly seem fair and balanced. He's pretty much stayed the same asshole he was at the start. The rest of the network has just gotten more extreme.
posted by Chekhovian at 9:39 PM on November 3, 2011 [3 favorites]

Previously: Global Times denounces Charlie Sheen.
posted by teraflop at 9:44 PM on November 3, 2011

However (and in a frankly non-coincidental way) the rah rah nationalism and energetically pro-political-leadership stance does make it read a little like the more lurid opeds in Communist-era Pravda.

This also goes for Fox News: it's always fair and balanced agitprop, they give you a choice of which Goldstein du jour to hate.
posted by jaduncan at 9:53 PM on November 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Uh, the Charlie Sheen piece was a joke column slipped in by one of their foreign contributors -- the byline "Hao Leifeng" is the giveaway.
posted by bokane at 10:49 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's about time to give up the notion that people should bond based on geographical proximity. The Internet has eliminated that. The future will be determined by psychological "nation-states" held together by common beliefs, quite independent of language or local culture.

I come from a place where Science and Reason triumph. In my place, we aim to use technology to improve the wellbeing of everyone. Currently my "nation" is at war with other trans-global nations where the collective belief involves protecting a simplistic traditionalism. It's a fight for mental resources instead of physical resources, but I believe that eventually we will win.
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:16 PM on November 3, 2011 [6 favorites]

This reminds me, there appears to be an ideological skirmish taking place on urbandictionary's definition of useful idiot.
posted by vanar sena at 11:24 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

I like how the fair and balanced Foreign Policy declares the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia an accident. You don't have to be a conspiraloon to consider that might not have been the case. Similar with various other throwaway summaries of events or historical periods. The FP author might reflect that people like Hu are in many ways their own counterpart - reproducing what looks like propaganda to an outsider because they have a set of unquestioned assumptions. There's no shortage of educated people here who do feel China is 'a besieged underdog'; ridiculous on its face if you think about regional dynamics or bilateral relations with, say, Vietnam; not so much if you spot the US Seventh Fleet (or whoever it is these days) steaming through the Taiwan Strait or consider the post-1945 history.
I'm sure Richard Burger is right about how studied some of the posturing at the Global Times is, it's a business first and foremost, but that doesn't make it entirely an act. They'll be some level at which the flag-waving (and the sheltering aegis of the People's Daily) opens up the space for the anti-corruption writing, and Sinopec is certainly a bigger target than the run-of-the-mill such story, but its not exactly pushing the boundaries - and nor is it in any way a contradiction to be patriotic and anti-corruption as the tenor of this FP article vaguely hints. Just because the official line on corruption is riddled with paradoxes, everyone's at it and crack-downs are ineffectual, doesn't mean some wild-eyed young patriot might dream of a China projecting its force over a comically large South Sea claim whilst being run by sober-minded neo-Confucians without their hand in the till or down some student's underwear.
posted by Abiezer at 11:41 PM on November 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Should add, you a get a bit more in-depth coverage in English of the goings-on on at Global Times (and the rest of the Chinese media of course) at the China Media Project site out of Hong Kong. Here's their translation of an editorial kicking Ai Weiwei while he was down; think I read elsewhere yesterday that they've set Ai's 'back tax bill' at USD2.4 million.
posted by Abiezer at 12:47 AM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

From the Charlie Sheen piece:

His employers are unhappy that he was distracted with prostitutes and drugs, and didn't show up to work on time. Why not take a tip from the Chinese business community, and make visits to a KTV parlor part of Sheen's workday?
[...]
As much as Sheen has lived a life most Chinese men can only fantasize about, our admiration of him can only go so far. He has not only lost face with his public rants, but also crossed a cultural barrier no Chinese can abide.

He ignored his own father's advice to keep quiet, who was once the president of the US. Sheen is a disgrace, unfilial to his father and his fatherland.

Martin Sheen should at once go on television and tearfully apologize on behalf of his son for his inability to keep up appearances and keep his mouth shut.

Epic.

I suppose the only way to know if Global Times was trolled or if they completely missed irony is if they've published stories like this before.
posted by the cydonian at 8:29 AM on November 4, 2011

The author of this piece appeared on this weeks Sinica Podcast, discussing the article.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 11:21 PM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

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Hu leads China's Fox News November 3, 2011 9:06 PM Subscribe

Hu leads China's Fox News
November 3, 2011 9:06 PM Subscribe