Monday, April 28, 2008

Throwing Bottles at Monks

“We thought Western media is very objective,” said Chou Wu, a 28-year-old working on his doctorate in material science, “and what it turned out is that Western media is even more biased than Chinese media. They’re no better, and even more, they’re against us.”

Once again, I find this hilarious. I think it's funny because of the last sentence, which I think is key to this whole thing. The perception of bias is probably based on the fact that the western media isn't saying things that these people want to hear. It's unpleasant to think that your government is shipping Han people into Tibet in order to take over culturally. It's not easy to admit that your government is cracking down on religious freedom. It's not nice for your country to be the bad guy. Trust me, as an American, I know. I don't automatically assume, however, that the European media is biased.

This is what happens when people identify too closely with their governments:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/education/29student.html?hp

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