Can We Talk About American Media's Connections to Chinese Interests?
Several weeks ago, we detailed how American mainstream media outlets were intent on
parroting communist propaganda talking points coming from disinformation ministers in Beijing.
At first glance, it would be easy to write this disturbing surrender of journalistic integrity to advanced stages of Trump Derangement System. It would be reasonable to suspect that reporters, producers, anchors and editors held such an intense zeal to oppose, resist and damage President Trump that they'd even stoop so low as to hand their bylines over to propagandists supporting the totalitarian murderers at the top of the Red China food chain.
However, something even more disconcerting may be at work here.
Over at
National Review, Jim Geraghty has assembled a disturbing and thorough timeline of the communist Chinese government's complicity in the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.
It's fantastic reporting and well worth your time when you're finished reading this.
This is fantastic work by Jim, but why is he the one who put this together? Jim's one of the best, don't get me wrong, but he, like so many of us, works for a scrappy media outlet with limited resources. I mean, there are huge media companies in this country covering this story who have resources and reporters all around the world at their fingertips to assemble this data.
Why didn't NBC News do this reporting? Or ABC News? Or CNN?
Every single major broadcast and cable news outlet covering the COVID-19 pandemic has a direct and critical interest in pleasing the communist regime in China. Every single one of them. To understand this critically important connection between these American news outlets and the Chinese government, you only need to understand the power of the Chinese market when it comes to the film industry.
It's not breaking news that the Chinese market is the
single most important region for growth and revenue for Hollywood. The profitability for many films these days is almost entirely dependant on ticket sales in China. If a major film doesn't sell in China, it's a problem for the studio. And films are only allowed to be shown in China if the communists in Beijing give permission. That's the beauty of a totalitarian, communist state. Nobody in the country sees "Avengers: End Game" unless the authoritarians are accommodated.
This directly affects how Hollywood makes its movies.
Much has been written about the growing influence the Chinese censors have on the product coming out of Hollywood. Both
conservative and
liberal news outlets have lamented this growing trend. The influence of Chinese censors is often depicted in amusing anecdotes like this
NPR feature explaining how a Tom Cruise blockbuster was modified to assuage the communist propagandists:
Consider Mission: Impossible III, which was partially shot in Shanghai. The film's establishing shot of Shanghai shows Tom Cruise walking past the winking lights of the modern cityscape and then past underwear hanging from a clothesline. The movie was released in 2006. Even now, many people in Shanghai don't own dryers and hang their clothes out on the balcony to dry.
"The censors felt that it did not portray Shanghai in a positive light, so that scene was removed from the movie," says T.J. Green, CEO of Apex Entertainment, which owns and builds movie theaters in China.
"The censorship always goes back to the Communist Party. They're in charge and they're always looking at how China is portrayed," he says. "They didn't want to see something that portrayed it ... [as] a developing country."
Consider:
- CBS News is part of a conglomerate of media and entertainment companies called National Amusements. The companies under their control include Viacom and Paramount Pictures.
- NBC News/MSNBC is part of Universal and Comcast.
- CNN is part of AT&T Time Warner, which owns Warner Brothers.
- ABC News is owned by Disney, which owns, well, pretty much everything else coming out of Hollywood.
Beyond the direct concerns of the film producing and distribution arms of these major corporations, they also have other direct interests in not ticking off the Beijing communists. These companies also own theme parks, cellular telephone networks, cable networks, movie theatres and much more.
All of their movies and theme parks sell toys and clothing which are manufactured in China. Cell phones and infrastructure equipment are manufactured in China. Cable boxes and broadband devices are manufactured in China.
Angering the Chinese government is just bad for business for these companies.
https://townhall.com/liveblog/2020/...avirus-task-force-n127?utm_campaign=inarticle
Can We Talk About American Media's Connections to Chinese Interests?