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From inside China we hear that YouTube and Western news sources are working again, carrying material that China clearly doesn’t agree with. Googling this, I see only one tiny mention and I wonder why. YouTube’s own blog doesn’t mention the blackout or comeback, perhaps a case of silent diplomacy.

Video: Riot in Tibet, true face of Western media. Note: this is one view in a multi-faceted issue and I’m posting the video here not because I agree with this view but because I think it’s important to see it. The outrage is not so different from what I hear when people are misquoted, just on a larger scale, and it reflects the same lack of understanding of how journalists actually work. Not enough time, sloppiness, lack of experience and no editorial direction (boss was out to coffee). That said, work conditions are sometimes far from ideal – probably safe to say that was the case in March in Tibet.

Chinese media have been showing apologies from various Western news sources for  their handling of the Tibetan unrest, and these are easy to find, in English, on Google. A sampler:

• "Western media’s biased reporting of Lhasa riots criticized," china.org
• "German media apologize for errors in covering Tibet riots," China Daily

and then we got a commentary on this from ABC’s reporter in Beijing.

It’s easy to assume the apologies saga is just more Chinese government propaganda, but if you look further, some disturbing media behaviour indeed surfaces. Since I’m one of those journalists who tends to spend time explaining to skeptics that I work in a mostly honorable industry, I find some of this pretty disturbing. I took Zone Europa’s advice and checked further on some of this. Not reassuring in terms of our news sources. On the other hand, it’s hard to present a fair story if you’re not allowed to cover something openly.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese anti-Dalai Lama campaign is working well in China,  and outsiders’ reports that praise him are falling on deaf ears.

Schizophrenia is the word that comes to mind where views on Tibet are
concerned. Either Tibetans are all saints, or they are all devils.
Ditto for the Dalai Lama. And either the Chinese are all saints or all
devils. As for Western journalists, I fear we are not all loved, all the time. But that’s not news to most people.

Surely reality is a little less black and white. Try googling "tibet western media apologies" and some of the gray starts to surface.

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