I wonder if the traditional media will remove their lips from China's rear end long enough to cover this one.
A group of six Americans who were taken into custody on Tuesday as they tried to protest China’s rule in Tibet have been given 10-day detentions, the Chinese police confirmed on Friday.
Lovely. What did these horrible individuals do to deserve such treatment?
Most of the organization’s demonstrations have involved unfurling "Free Tibet" banners or displaying Tibetan flags, which are illegal in China. In the latest action, just after midnight Thursday morning, four protestors raised their fists and shouted slogans while waving a Tibetan flag near National Stadium. As with the other protests, the participants were quickly bundled away by plainclothes police.
Hey! Sounds like grounds for imprisonment to me!
Whether or not the protest was a good idea, don't we deserve even a tiny bit of coverage about the problems in China thrown in with all the tremendous media buttkissing we've seen for the last week and a half? Maybe?
Is anyone else completely nauseated by the traditional media coverage of the Olympics? Two days ago, I got so sick that I just stopped watching.
Look--I enjoy the Olympics quite a bit. I was looking forward to it this time around even though I had grave concerns about the choice of China as a venue. I was hoping, though, that the intense focus on China would give more Americans a realistic picture of what China was like. The good and the bad. Sadly, that has not proven true.
The other morning, the Today show treated us to a 5-minute segment on Meredith Vieira shopping for a custom-made silk dress and complaining that she thought she'd been "ripped off" because she'd paid $140 instead of the $100 she'd later heard that others paid. They were all raving about the custom-made clothing everyone was getting in China.
While they were all gushing over their new clothes, no one bothered to mention this:
Newspaper and journal reports indicate that children are also working in the garment and textile industries of China. Imports of apparel and textiles from China to the U.S. market are reaching beyond $4.5 billion each year. It was reported that China's number one textile firm at Qingpu employs children aged 12 to 15 years old that recruited were from the neighboring province of Anhui. In Chungsan City, a foreign textile enterprise employed about 160 child laborers and a 14 year old was killed after her hair became tangled in her machine. Journalists also found 12 year-old children sleeping two to three in a bed in dorms and working 15 hours a day for $10 per month (Lindsay).
Source: http://ihscslnews.org/...
Not a word was spoken about how the low-cost garment industry in China is supported by child and slave labor. No mention, even, that Meredith was careful to select a shop that did not use child or slave labor to ake their dresses.
Has NBC even once mentioned that journalists do not have unfettered access to the internet? How about the fact that the Chinese government is removing evidence from the internet of their falsification of the documents of under-age gymnasts? Any of this? NO! Instead we're treated to hours and hours on end talking about what a wonderful time everyone is having in China and what a great country it is.
Listen... I'm not asking for the traditional media to turn the Olympics into one big human rights protest. That's not what the Olympics are about. And God knows the U.S. has problems of its own. But the media could at least stop insulting our intelligence by pretending that China is happy joyous land without a care in the world.
You think maybe the extrajudicial detention of American citizens--without access to lawyers without any kind of process--will make the mainstream media sit up and take notice? Naaaaah. It might take too much time away from shopping for silk dresses.