{"id":477689,"date":"2022-01-20T16:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fair.org\/?p=9025869"},"modified":"2022-01-20T16:00:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T16:00:37","slug":"action-alert-nyts-china-covid-coverage-needs-to-acknowledge-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/01\/20\/action-alert-nyts-china-covid-coverage-needs-to-acknowledge-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"ACTION ALERT: NYT\u2019s China Covid Coverage Needs to Acknowledge Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"NYT:

A New York Times<\/strong> article (1\/12\/22<\/a>) assailed China for following a zero Covid policy, “no matter the human costs”–without ever mentioning the human costs of not containing the coronavirus.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

The New York Times<\/b> report (1\/12\/22<\/a>) on the response to an outbreak of Covid-19 in the Chinese city of Xi’an featured over-the-top hand-wringing about \u201cauthoritarianism\u201d and a complete erasure of the dangers of the coronavirus. Had this article been about Covid-19 response in Europe or the United States, one could swear it was from InfoWars<\/b> or some other far-right, Covid-denying fringe outlet.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s \u201czero Covid\u201d policy is indeed a major outlier in the world\u2019s approach to the pandemic. The country, the most populous in the world, took pride in this fact when it announced that it had less than 200 reported positive cases for January 8, a slight increase from days before (Reuters<\/b>, 1\/9\/22<\/a>). This hasn\u2019t come without its hardships; noncitizens of China should be advised not to plan a vacation to a country with closed borders (CNN<\/b>, 11\/15\/21<\/a>; Time<\/b>, 12\/1\/21<\/a>). And outbreaks are met with lockdowns that can upend daily life for millions, as the city of Xi\u2019an is learning (Xinhua<\/b>, 1\/10\/22<\/a>).<\/p>\n

‘Iron-fist, authoritarian policies’<\/b><\/h3>\n

The Times<\/b> article by Li Yuan started off with some undeniable hardships, reflecting chaotic coordination of services. But it leaped from this to calling the Chinese Covid response a set of \u201ciron-fist, authoritarian policies [that] emboldened its officials, seemingly giving them license to act with conviction and righteousness.\u201d Chinese officials are striving to \u201censure zero Covid infections\u201d\u2014not because it is the right thing to do, but because \u201cit is the will of their top leader, Xi Jinping.\u201d<\/p>\n

With language like \u201cconviction and righteousness\u201d and \u201cthe will of their top leader,\u201d you can hear the Times<\/b> attempting to parody the propagandistic style of CCP outlets for its own anti-China purposes. But by applying tems like “iron fist” and “authoritarian” to successful public health measures, the Times<\/b> unironically echoed the framing of\u00a0 right-wing partisans (Breitbart<\/b>, 8\/3\/21<\/a>, Federalist<\/b>, 9\/9\/21<\/a>; Fox News<\/b>, 9\/29\/21<\/a>; Newsmax<\/b>, 9\/13\/21<\/a>; Telegraph<\/b>, 11\/22\/21<\/a>; Miami Herald<\/b>, 12\/20\/21<\/a>) when they attack less effective Western containment policies.<\/p>\n

\"New

The New York Times<\/strong> compared officials who enforced public health measures in Xi’an to Holocaust engineer Adolf Eichmann; like him, they are “willing to be the enablers of authoritarian policies.”
<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

It gets worse. When reporting on how low-level officials in the city comply with lockdown measures, Yuan quoted Chinese social media commentary to invoke philosopher Hannah Arendt\u2019s \u201cbanality of evil,\u201d a concept Arendt applied (as Yuan noted) to high-ranking Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. Again, this is the same trope the far right (CNN<\/b>, 7\/7\/21<\/a>; Reuters<\/b>, 12\/15\/21<\/a>; NBC<\/b>, 1\/12\/22<\/a>) uses when they insist that vaccine cards and mandates are just a step away from the cattle cars, which is not just absurd but an offensive trivialization of Nazi terror.<\/p>\n

This invocation of Arendt sets up the rest of the piece: While there are some who don\u2019t like the Xi\u2019an lockdown, those that are going along with it aren\u2019t an opposing viewpoint, but rather the brainwashed drones of a devious plot against humanity. \u201cChinese intellectuals,\u201d Yuan wrote, are baffled that workers and civilians who enforce zero Covid policies are \u201cdriven by professional ambition or obedience\u2026to be the enablers of authoritarian policies.\u201d Such prose could have been lifted from Josh Mandel, the Republican senate candidate in Ohio who, in response to the idea of vaccine mandates, \u201ccompared [President Joe] Biden to the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police force\u201d (Jewish Telegraphic Agency<\/b>, 9\/10\/21<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Them, not us\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
\"New

The New York Times<\/strong> complained that lockdown rules in Xi’an hospitals “deprived…loved ones of a last chance to say goodbye.” The more than 30,000 people who would have been lost by their loved ones if Xi’an had the same Covid death rate as the US were not brought up.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

The Times<\/b> spoke of social media censorship in China in relation to lockdowns. Such an issue isn\u2019t nothing, but again, this is also true of the major US social media networks, like Facebook<\/b> and Twitter<\/b> (Bloomberg<\/b>, 6\/7\/21<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Times<\/b> wrote of \u201cthe hospitals that denied patients access to medical care and deprived their loved ones of the chance to say goodbye.\u201d It noted that because of the lockdown, a man was denied care and died of a heart attack, and a pregnant woman who was turned away had a miscarriage.<\/p>\n

The part about dying alone suggests that in a normal country, it is standard procedure to allow visitors in to see patients who are dying from contagious diseases. This is of course not the case, as the Times<\/b> (3\/29\/20<\/a>) acknowledges in its non-China reporting.<\/p>\n

As for the denial of care, keep in mind that these were two tragedies in a city of 13 million. People being unable to access emergency rooms because they are overflowing with Covid patients is an enormous problem<\/a> in the United States\u2014sometimes with fatal<\/a> results\u2014but the Times<\/b> story gives no inkling that access to care could be a problem outside an “authoritarian” state.<\/p>\n

And Xi\u2019an\u2019s health system under lockdown does have some semblance of accountability, as the AP<\/b> (1\/6\/22<\/a>) reported:\u00a0 \u201cHospital officials in the northern Chinese city of Xi\u2019an have been punished after a pregnant woman miscarried after being refused entry, reportedly for not having current Covid-19 test results.\u201d The CCP-run Global Times<\/b> (1\/5\/22<\/a>) called the incident a \u201cheartbreaking misfortune\u201d and reported that \u201clocal authorities stressed that all hospitals must not use the excuse of epidemic prevention and control to avoid treating patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are other forms of accountability in Xi\u2019an public health. The South China Morning Post<\/b> (1\/5\/22<\/a>) said that the city \u201csuspended its top official in charge of big data after the system powering the local health code app, a critical tool in China\u2019s zero-Covid strategy, crashed for a second time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times<\/b> article does acknowledge that<\/p>\n

a few low-level Xi\u2019an officials were punished…. The general manager of a hospital was suspended. Last Friday, the city announced that no medical facility could reject patients on the basis of Covid tests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“But that was about it,” Yuan sighs. It’s not clear what kind of retribution she was hoping for\u2014prison sentences?<\/p>\n

‘To surmount these trying times’<\/b><\/h3>\n
\"NYT

The New York Times<\/strong>, depicting food delivery during the Xi’an lockdown, said that “some people have struggled to get food<\/span>” in the city.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

China\u2019s state-run news wire, Xinhua <\/b>(1\/4\/22<\/a>), doesn\u2019t dispute that the lockdown in Xi\u2019an comes with \u201cstrict\u201d containment measures, but at the same time defends them as a necessary public health measure. It quoted one French expatriate who \u201cbelieves that it is necessary for Xi’an to adopt strict control measures\u201d: “Not being free now is for real freedom later. The epidemic should be brought under control as soon as possible through strict measures.\u201d As the paper put it, Chinese \u201cauthorities have taken strict measures to curb the spread of the virus,\u201d noting that the response\u2019s priority is \u201cto surmount these trying times.\u201d<\/p>\n

This outlook is one that many people have expressed the world over, including in the United States. While few have experienced the kind of intense lockdowns associated with China\u2019s zero-Covid policy, a great many people from all corners of the globe have come to the conclusion that canceling events and travel, mandating remote work, restricting in-person services and requiring masks are things that must be done to tackle this pandemic.<\/p>\n

Just compare this Times<\/b> report to Xinhua<\/b>\u2019s coverage (1\/13\/22<\/a>) of the US government\u2019s response to the omicron surge. It is written in cold, straight journalism that pulls heavily from US officials, academics and at least one US newspaper. And while it paints a picture of a country struggling to deal with the pandemic, it does report some positive news: \u201cThe White House also promised to make lab capacity available for 5 million free polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xinhua<\/b> could have easily mocked America\u2019s overstrained hospitals and the breakdown of public services\u00a0 (New York Times<\/b>, 1\/7\/22<\/a>, 1\/14\/22<\/a>; AP<\/b>, 1\/8\/22<\/a>; NPR<\/b>, 1\/13\/22<\/a>) as proof that Covid has exposed the United States as a failed state and an empire in decline. Instead, Chinese state media\u2019s reporting on the pandemic in the US is, at least in this instance, fairer than the Times<\/b> coverage of Xi\u2019an. That\u2019s quite a feat.<\/p>\n

FAIR (1\/29\/21<\/a>, 9\/17\/21<\/a>) has criticized New York Times<\/b> coverage of China\u2019s Covid policy in the past, for its harsh, one-sided attacks on a strategy that has literally saved millions of lives. (If the same proportion of China’s population had died from the pandemic that has so far died in the United States, its death toll would be 3.6 million. Its actual toll: less than 5,000.) But its latest coverage of Xi\u2019an, with the casual flinging about of Nazi analogies, reaches a level of partisan hyperbole that puts the paper of record on a par with Fox News<\/b> and Breitbart<\/b>.<\/p>\n

\n

ACTION:<\/h2>\n

Please tell the New York Times<\/b> to report on the successes as well as the problems of China’s Covid strategy, without resorting to the far-right’s anti\u2013public health tropes.<\/p>\n

CONTACT:<\/h2>\n

Letters: letters@nytimes.com<\/a>
\nReaders Center: Feedback<\/a>
\nTwitter<\/b>: @NYTimes<\/a><\/p>\n

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.<\/i><\/p>\n

The post ACTION ALERT: NYT’s China Covid Coverage Needs to Acknowledge Reality<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on FAIR<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Times coverage of Covid in China, with its casual Nazi analogies, reaches a level of partisan hyperbole on a par with Fox News.<\/p>\n

The post ACTION ALERT: NYT\u2019s China Covid Coverage Needs to Acknowledge Reality<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1416,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4586,1303,190,338,259,1784,262,263],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477689"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342966,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477689\/revisions\/1342966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}