Thursday, July 26, 2007

CNN Beef


CNN is making it a GIVEN that people are going to want to avoid made in China products. They just make it a given.

The real stories are being reported on BBC World and Asia news and the Australian news network. It's a very interesting story about some goings on in China and the fact that some feel they should protect themselves from China as far as trade and money goes.

It's a bit hard for me to articulate this because I might sound like China is perfect, which it's not and I don't care one way or another...my beef is with the news coverage. It's so weird. Just cover the story, don't tell me what to think and create a scare. CNN is actually attempting to create a scare or the appearance of one. The other news outlets are covering China stuff extensively, but CNN is like, "How to avoid Chinese products...oh look it's so hard."

The recent issue in China that was sad had to do with antibiotics, which aren't exported to the US...that's totally an internal issue. There's a pet food crisis. The pet food crisis affected people over seas. Anyway, there's interesting stuff going on...but CNN is just pathetic.

The international version of CNN is better than the US version, but still...

By the way, I should mention that it's very common for countries to go back and forth fighting over imports and exports and protecting their own businesses and whatnot. That's what this is about.

Take South Korea for an example. For years they have been broadcasting that US Beef is not safe. South Korean people were like 'hey, that's a convenient truth', we can stop the imports of US beef, and they did. Was there ever a real scare? My students ask me about mad cow disease sometimes, I'm like yeah, I'm not sure how many people have actually died from that. I didn't change my life at all, I know I was mad when Oprah got sued because she should be able to say whatever she likes. But other countries used that info to ban the import. It's politics. They recently lifted the ban, it was a hot South Korean political issue.

The latest CNN report about a woman who wrote a book detailing her trials of going without made in China for a whole year doesn't mention what her husband or she does for a living. I'd be interested to know.

I know the picture here implies the government controls CNN, but I like this picture. What's going on in this case is not control by government, but CNN supporting a certain ideology of the business community (not the lazzie-faire group).

1 comment:

Ed said...

When I was in america I just couldnt watch the tv, I tried a few times but i just couldnt, The news is just terrible, its made look like a gameshow or something and the stories tend to be totally unimportant in real terms and then half the stories are "oh look the this poochie who saved a small kitten AWWWWW isnt that cute....and also as a side note 30 more US soldiers died today BUT LOOK AT THE CUTE DOG"

Irish and British TV in general is so much more subtle and you are less guided in a certain way of interpreting things