Which is better, Chinese or American media?

Question: Which is better, Chinese or American media? By Qi Chen.

How do the Chinese people know for sure the facts they receive from their government are not distorted?

Answer: Personally, the biggest difference between the Chinese state media and the western private media and the one I like the most is the following: Chinese state media reports positive things in people’s life.

Let’s crack open the front page of CNN: People got killed, things exploded, someone died.

While CNN certainly isn’t without positive and neutral news, but the overwhelming majority is negative news in some form. Basically, if you watch enough CNN, your default position is going to be “what a crap world we are in”.

How about BBC? People died, other people went to jail, more people died. Again, while it is without positive or neutral news completely, the overall tone is again “our world is crap”.

So what about Chinese state news CCTV-1? It starts with goals, dreams, challenges of the country. Then it is international climate change meeting. After that flood relief preparation process. Then it is tax and financial reform, etc.

It is often joked that that the Chinese state news is in three segment “the leaders are quite busy, the things are getting better, stuff blew up somewhere” and it is true in some sense.

However, the key thing here, is that the state news in China do try to honestly provide people with coverage on people who tries to simply live a better life.

In the recent two decades, with the spread of internet, general news reporting have gradually degenerated into a sort of a cesspool of the worst excess of humanity. Why? Because stuff blew up, giant pile of car wreck and people getting murdered are much more powerful click-baits.

This inevitably lead to an big issue: So what happens when isn’t an obvious click bait new available? In an ideal world, people just report other news instead, but the reality is, corporate profit demands that if don’t have real click bait news, distort, lie, manufacture the click bait.

This need for corporate profit actively motivates you to distort and falsify news.

From long term perspective, it is quite harmful to the mental well-being of the entire society. Like I said, if you only watch CNN and BBC, your mentality is going to be “our world is crap, our lives are crap and we are crap”. Needless to say, that’s not healthy at all.

In contrast, the Chinese state media may seem boring to the bone, it has very little motivate to falsify things, because they don’t need click bait. They are a subbranch of the Chinese government and their funding has zero to do with how many people click on the news. In fact, their main purpose is to relay information/instruction/command from the central government to the common Chinese people.

Why is this important? Well, remember the story of the boy crying wolf? An messenger that relay false news cost its credibility and thus its ability to relay future message and instruction. So for the Chinese state media, lying or distortion of the news directly hurts their main purpose of existences in the first place.

And from the long term perspective, people are genuinely motivated more when they know there are other people actively trying to make the world a better place.

Misery loves company, but happiness spread as well. I think for the sake of our mind, the latter is much preferred than the former.

In my experience with Chinese media and western media with multiple news feeds from both on a daily basis :

1. Western media lies A LOT and they are so BIASED that NOBODY can be sure whatever they reported is anything trustworthy and I need to search other western media with the OPPOSITE bias to try to find out what EXACTLY happened. There is NO WAY anyone can get ANYTHING meaningful out of news relating to Trump as Fox and CNN will report the SAME event as if they were COMPLETELY different.
2. Chinese media censors MOST news if they do NOT believe it’s true, cause negative effects to China and other friendly countries and people, and might create controversy, troubles and violence within the Chinese society that they are NOT ready and/or NOT willing to tackle with. They seldom lie or make things up OUT OF NOTHING and they RARELY comment on or criticize actions of other countries, as they themselves STRONGLY believe each country has the right NOT to be interfered by external forces.

Which medium is worse ? As an audience, I find the West is MUCH WORSE.

Their hypocrisy, double standards, brutality against others both verbally, politically and militarily are at ALARMING scales. Remember the mass murdering of innocent civilians and throat-slitting of children in Afghanistan by Australian soldiers and what happened in the Capitol Hill ? It’s ALWAYS a good laugh to watch some western media as they talk so much NONSENSE.

Fox lawyers testified in US court that the TV hosts should NEVER be trusted in telling the truth. That sums it up PERFECTLY.

“The Legal Defense For Fox’s Tucker Carlson: He Can’t Be Literally Believed : NPR” You Literally Can’t Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox’s Lawyers

Finally, freedom of speech their ass in the West. I NEVER like Trump BUT why so MANY media platforms cut him off and rid him of his freedom of speech and free expression?

Had anyone checked what the latest on the Aussie whistleblower of the Afghanistan incidents and why he needed to be prosecuted for exposing the horrendous crimes and murders of innocent people in a foreign country ?

The shelf life of all these fake democracy, freedom and human rights being constantly preached by the US and its subordinated allies is QUICKLY coming to EXPIRY. ONLY the stupidest and/or the weakest people and countries have NO choice but to follow.