The Communist Party’s official control of the media is becoming increasingly stringent, and Reporters Without Borders reported last year that Beijing also wants to control the media outside of China.
On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, news was “completely blocked or seriously obstructed” in 73 countries, and “restricted” in 59. In an April 28 online roundtable with foreign journalists on press freedom, Secretary of State Antony Blinken directly named Beijing for propaganda and disinformation abroad through state-run media enterprises and platforms. U.S. sinologist Perry Link also said that “many of the journalists” in the Communist Party’s official media in the United States are not actually journalists, but spies.
Link, a well-known American sinologist, has a Ph.D. in Chinese history from Harvard University and is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside. “The Voice of America reported that Blinken, at a press freedom conference last month, accused Beijing of playing both sides of the fence, attempting to interfere with or undermine democracy to some degree.
He said that “many of the employees of the Chinese Communist Party’s official media in the United States are not actually journalists,” he said in a shocking statement. He stressed that China also has journalists of conscience, but those who are sent to the United States with U.S. visas to work as journalists are “partly, I don’t know how much, at least partly, what can only be described as secret agents, not journalists.
As for the layout of the media between the U.S. and China, Lin Peirui thinks it is very unequal, he said that the Chinese Communist Party uses the free space in the United States for sure, they go to the United States to distribute messages, and the free media in the free world certainly allow it, but on the contrary, if the U.S. Washington Post and the New York Times want to distribute messages in China, it is simply impossible, “so it is a situation that is absolutely unbalanced So it’s a situation that’s absolutely unbalanced.
However, despite this, Perry does not favor a ban and still advocates freedom of the press. Although fake news should be controlled, he believes that instead of “banning to control”, the person who spreads fake news should be allowed to speak and then “demolished” so that everyone knows it is a lie and if the person who spreads fake news continues to lie in the future, people in the United States and other countries will have a sense of immunity. People in the U.S. and other countries will have an immunity to know that this is probably nonsense, which is better than forbidding him to say it.
“Reporters Without Borders, in response to Press Freedom Day, earlier released a World Press Freedom Index survey in which at least three quarters of the 180 countries surveyed Of the 180 countries surveyed, at least 3/4 had partial restrictions on press freedom, with as many as 73 countries experiencing “complete blocking or serious obstruction” of reporting and 59 countries experiencing “restrictions. China, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and Djibouti are the worst countries for press freedom.
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