National Public Radio’s Anthony Kuhn has an interview with the founder of anti-cnn.com, 23 year old Rao Jin.   Rao and the hundreds of volunteers who have joined his cause maintain the website to counteract what they see as bias in Western media coverage of China and its policies in Tibet.  Interesting story with interesting perspectives.

Reports have emerged of new, violent protests by Tibetans in the city of Garze, part of China’s Sichuan Province. Given the lack of media access and the vaunted “reliability” of government information, details are still sketchy at the moment. Tibetan exile groups claim that People’s Armed Police units shot and killed eight protesters, while Xinhua, the Chinese state news service, says simply that the rioters were restrained after “warning shots” were fired. Given that the Rashomon effect may be in play here, I’ll hold off on calling it one way or another…

The discrepancy is likely to stir up more angry voices on the net as a number of Chinese “netizens” have taken umbrage at what they see as biased Western reporting on the Tibetan protests. In fact, one group of disgruntled viewers has created its own website, anti-cnn.com, which seeks to go beard to beard with Blitzer or any other journalist that distorts the truth as they see it. The site does seem to have caught quite a few examples of sloppy editing, especially where images of protests at the Chinese embassy in Nepal were displayed next to headlines about China (then again, pictures from Tibet are hard to come by…maybe the news organizations didn’t have anything else to show).

Having some years of experience as a consumer of the very media these individuals are critiquing, I can say with confidence that they’ve probably caught some legitimate screw ups, distortions, and examples of good, old-fashioned ignorance born of two decades worth of foreign bureau budget cuts at the major papers and networks. Still, most coverage I read and watched made no secret of the fact that protesters were hurling rocks and burning stores. Within the constraints of covering a story as inaccessible as the riots were, I think I got pretty good picture of what was going on. Now, if they expect the New York Times to run a front page story explaining that the Dalai Lama has never done a good deed in his life and is clearly responsible for all of the Spring time risings in China’s west, they have another thing coming…

Whenever something serious is happening in China, I always take a minute to browse through People’s Daily and marvel at the bizarre unreality offered up by the media mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. This is wonderful example of the sort of “coverage” offered by our friends at Renmin Ribao:

Lying in the People’s Hospital, Losang Cering had seven stitches on his face. His cheekbone was broken and the Tibetan doctor also suffered cerebral concussion.

“I didn’t regret helping the Hans,” he said.
Losang Cering went out with nurse Cejig last Friday to rescue the injured in the riot, when he saw a tearful father, whose name he knew later was Wu Guanglin, cuddling his son in front of a smoky house crying for help. The boy was trampled by rioters and suffocated.

They performed artificial respiration for the six-year-old boy and drove him and Wu Guanglin to hospital. But the ambulance was intercepted within 10 meters by a dozen mobsters wielding knives and clubs or holding bricks, who asked for the Hans.

Rebuffing their demand, Losang Cering clinched the boy to his chest and gave his safety helmet to Wu.

“I am a doctor. They won’t hurt me,” he said.

Although the doctor and the nurse were both injured seriously in the violence, he was glad the boy was saved.

Talking about his story, Losang Cering didn’t appear proud at all. “It was my duty,” he said, “when we are in trouble, I believe that the Hans would do the same.”

Though I have no doubt that this story is true, you have to admire the skilled construction of a soothing narrative portraying the “good Tibetan” in solidarity with his Han brethren, facing down the ravenous mob of “splittists” who seem intent on violence against anyone of any ethnicity who falls in their path. Just when you think the CCP is getting soft, they prove that they still have the old propaganda magic. Oh well…you have to at least give them credit for even talking about  Tibet.