Disinformation as terror tool
Updated: 2008-04-19 07:35
People like Mr. Jack Cafferty of CNN have turned news into verbal violence and a tool for hegemony, says an article in People's Daily. The following is an excerpt.
Mr. Jack Cafferty won notoriety in China overnight.
If a survey were to be conducted now in China among netizens, Cafferty, an anchor of the Cable News Network (CNN) of the US, must be the person who may incur the most intense displeasure from the Chinese people.
Cafferty used the microphone in his hand to insult all Chinese people. When the Olympic torch was on relay in San Francisco, Cafferty presumptuously described Chinese-made goods as "junk" and vilely fumed that "the Chinese are basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they have been in the past 50 years".
Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, one is shocked and angered to see that a man can so blatantly rail at a nation and openly indulge in racism on an internationally-known TV program.
What Cafferty said transgressed the boundary of the freedom of the press and expression. It's not only an insult to the Chinese people, but also a challenge to the conscience and axiomatic morality of all humanity and a blasphemy on the common values shared by the human society.
The abusive outburst of Cafferty is by no means incidental. Since the Lhasa riots on March 14, some sections of the Western media have devoted enormous space to false reportage and to the distortion of the truth. Their pens turned criminal acts such as looting and arson into "peaceful demonstrations" for human rights; the prosecution of those rioters was painted as a violation of "human rights". Also, during the torch relay, a handful of campaigners for "Tibet independence" were given free runs of TV footage, while voices like "China, Cheer Up" from hundreds of overseas Chinese were purposely stifled. As a Chinese who lives in France said, these sections of the western media "only wanted the facts that tally with their own needs and not the whole truth".
This practice of using the media to misguide the masses and demonize China has been described by a Russian political analyst as "information terrorism". To super powers that are losing the leadership of the world, information is a favorite weapon, for they understand that in an information society, the masses have to depend, to a large degree, on the information they receive for their understanding of the reality. Who dominates the dissemination of information will dominate the way the masses look at an incident. It's no less than a terrorist act to use false information as a weapon to spread hatred and immorality, for both use false information and hurt peace and harmony of the world.
Cafferty's comments may incite some people to stir some trouble in the short term. But, as the saying goes, the truth "will be out". The people will eventually know the facts. "Information terrorism" will ultimately meet its inglorious end.
(China Daily 04/19/2008 page4)
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