Peripheral Post IV -JAE-

Peripheral Post IV

A few weeks back, news broke concerning the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) being sued by citizens of 新疆 (Xinjiang province) in northwestern China. The news source was The Global Times, a news organization sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). And on April 1st, 2021 The New York Times confirmed that a BBC correspondent left Beijing, to seek sanctuary in Taipei, due to threats to his physical safety, in addition to a mounting propaganda campaign against him and his employer the BBC. Furthermore, in recent years, the CCP has grown aggressive towards institutions reporting negative, or critical, stories of treatment of the 回族 (Uyghur ethnic group) that mostly call Xinjiang province home. The CCP and Global Times argue that the U.K. is weaponizing their news media to demonize China as well as spreading imperialism through global human rights discourses. In return, the BBC and New York Times assert that the CCP is producing disinformation campaigns that conceal abuses of Uygher people and other voices of unrest. Such as 香港人 (People of Hong Kong) who have protested in 2014 (購物/shopping protests) and again in 2019-2020 (Umbrella movement). Yet, the unrest within news media in China, Hong Kong, the U.K, and even the U.S. have led to interesting changes in news reporting conventions. 

Social media platforms have become a bastion for independent formal news reporting. But 2020 saw a notable proliferation of news personalities taking to Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok to distribute news faster and more directly than would be possible within a traditional news outlet. This is partly due to the bureaucratic designs of traditional news outlets, and partly due to being able to circumvent the political and corporate agendas of traditional news outlets. In this class, we have discussed at length how TV possesses the ability to respond to culture as well as the ability to shape culture through discourse production/destruction. The genre of television news programming is arguably one of the most powerful in terms of influencing the imaginaries of the citizenry; news programming is privileged, by the beliefs of its viewers, to always be true. But, the truths in news programming are still subject to discursive framing and censorship. Additionally, the turn to social media platforms as a means to mediate discursive influence isn’t foolproof. The reporters have selected the stories they report on, which means these stories have been privileged, based on the reporter’s sensibilities, as being important enough to report on. Yet, in the end, important stories can and will still go unreported, unseen, unnoticed, though these facts should be what inspires innovation in news reporting to minimize oversight as much as one can.