Print-Screen Of RFA Report/ Amended For Accuracy by @tibettruth
We’ve long exposed an alarming deficiency of Radio Free Asia‘s coverage on Tibet. This flaw is not about editorial style or journalistic errors but a policy, one hard-wired into their reportage.
Funded from the US State Department; and with longstanding concerns of a corrosive Chinese influence at work within its offices, its output on Tibet carefully and consistently uses Chinese terms to describe, what in fact, are Tibetan locations, place-names and regions.
This stems from the decades old policy of appeasement towards China’s regime by the State Department which (having in 1972 abandoned the courageous Tibetan resistance) was keen to recognize Chinese claims that Tibet was an inalienable part of China. It maintains that troubling stance.
In terms of politics and objective RFA is effectively an extension of the State Department, which explains why their editors are meticulously consistent in saturating reports on Tibet with descriptions that conform to and repeat official Chinese propaganda .
It would seem they recognize no issue of journalistic integrity, are either ignorant of, or indifferent to, the immense bravery of Tibetans from inside occupied Tibet, who risk everything to get information out. However, editorial loyalty is clearly towards the tainted policy of their State Department paymasters.
Take the example, shown in a screenshot above, published 5/30.202023. It was edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster, who paid particular attention to placing within the report the following distortions: ‘in China’s Qinghai province’, ‘Tibetans living in Rebgong county’, ‘in western China’, ‘a Tibetan-populated area of China’s Qinghai province’, and ‘Tibetan-populated regions of western China’.
This post was originally published on Digital Activism Im Support Of Tibetan Independence.
