Beijing's Olympic Bidding and US Media Coverage

It's very nice to read messages from many countries, and most readers expressed their objective opinions on various topics. I'd like to talk a little bit about beijing's olympic bid and mainstream u.s. media's coverage. As many people know, when coming to report anything on china, u.s. media is extremely biase, some journalists don't know china, chinese people, and chinese culture well enough to give objective reports (some don't want to know), and some others have already formed their negative perceptions of china and they totally ignore the changes happened in china for the past two decades. This has reflected in most of their china stories and beijing's olympic bidding was one example.

I'd first like to list a couple of facts and background before beijing's bid:
- Chinese people has a long tradition of participating in various sports and a large portion of public love sports events. - When china first attented olympic games (1936?), it did not win any medal. One european newspaper wrote an article on chinese athlets with a big "O" and the pharase "East-asia's sick men" by their pictures. This humaliation has a deep impact on chinese public since then. - After leaving olympics for decades, china re-entered the olympic games in 1984 and their athlets did very well with 16 golds. By 2000, china was the 3rd on the medal list in Sydney. After losing 2 votes to australia (china's IOC executive, He Zhenliang, was the first one to congratulate Sydney for winning the bid), beijing started over again for the 2008 bid.

Now let's look at how u.s. media reported it: during the whole bidding process, the media gave all kinds of negative stories and reports, some people in the congress tried to pass a resolution against beijing's bid, the media kept on their negative coverage on beijing and china even after beijing's winning. When we read those coverages, anyone with clear mind would have the impression: the media's behaviour is not due to different political viewpoints, it displayed it's true color: that's is, how much the media does not chinese people and its culture. Mainstream u.s. media politized everything about china while they purposely ignored the following facts:

- Beijing's bid had about 95% of public support (why the public opinions of chinese people were not respected if the media really cared about democratic principles?)
- Beijing bidding committee did a wonderful job in presenting the city and chinese culture to the IOC voting members. It's a professional group composed by college professors, journalists, famous artists, city officials, environmental exports, etc. Who would be impressed and touched by the bidding movie directed by Zhang Yimou, one of the best film directors in today's world?
- Beijing won by 56 votes, and won it clean. If we really respect democracy, how could media accursed a democratic process?
All those mean attitudes seen through u.s. media's coverage made many chinese wonder why?! I hope the journalists go to visit china, see with their own eyes, talk to ordinary chinese people, and they properly could write their china stories better.

wzhang1@lms.kent.edu

shi zhang
10.9