Western Media Lies!

"The French really make Chinese people angry,"said Zhou Shuyang, a 22-year-old student. "And we don't want to be treated this way by the Western media, which lies. If we were allowed, a lot of people would join in protests, and I would as well."

I found this quote to be outrageously funny. It was in an article about the Olympic protests, I can't remember which newspaper. Maybe the Guardian or Der Spiegel. Of course the western media lies. Sometimes. But usually not intentionally, I hope. Sometimes it's horribly biased, and sometimes it only shows the stories that are marketable. But it's a whole lot better than the government controlling the content of the media. There is such a disconnect between our understandings of the role of media in our respective societies. Since the media is so tightly controlled by the government here in China, most Chinese just assume that it is that way elsewhere. My speaking partner told me the other day that the media is called the throat of the party. She also mentioned that she had recently seen an article that said that the US government was telling the US media to only show coverage of Olympic protests and to not show coverage of people supporting the Olympics. How ridiculous is that?

What I thought was especially funny about the above quote, besides the western media lies part, was the "If we were allowed, a lot of people would join in protests" bit. It's just so ironic. Freedom to do things, like a freedom of the press, may lead to lies sometimes, but freedom of assembly would also allow you to protest those lies.