US Media: 'Telling China's Story Well'
by Judith Bergman • January 16, 2021 at 5:00 am
"If foreign audiences know that a piece of information comes from an official Chinese media source, they are likely to interpret it as 'propaganda' rather than 'news,'" wrote China expert Anne-Marie Brady in 2015...
Fortunately for the CCP, China could rely on large segments of mainstream US media to help it....
The CCP evidently knew the West well enough to calculate that framing the debate [on the coronavirus] in terms of racism would be a highly successful strategy that would play into the divisive issue of identity politics in the US and Europe.
The CCP could not have done it, however, without the media's lack of critical judgment of China's behavior, as well as the media's utter lack of interest in the CCP's quest for global domination and, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, its willingness to achieve it "by any means necessary."
One of the foremost tasks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping is, at his directive, to "tell stories about China well and spread China's voice well; enable the world to see a multidimensional and colorful China; present China as a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and an upholder of international order".
When the coronavirus pandemic broke out in December 2019 in Wuhan and the Chinese authorities allowed it to spread to the rest of the world, "telling China's story well" suddenly became an acute concern. It was necessary to save the regime's face, deflect blame and seek to portray China as heroically battling the pandemic, instead of the reality of having caused it. China went into an even more energetic propaganda mode than usual, seeking to control the narrative about the virus at every turn.
