It is Chinese Language Sing Tao Daily Who is Lying and Fabricating News
-- Sing Tao Daily appears to edit news on Tibet in favour of Chinese
regime
Did Toronto Paper Kowtow With Tibet Story Edits?
Torstar-owned Sing Tao Daily appears to edit news on Tibet in favour of
Chinese regime
By Jason Loftus and Mathew Little
Epoch Times Staff
Apr 17, 2008
Sing Tao's front page on Sunday, April 13, 2008. The headline reads:
"The West Attacks China With Tibet Issue, Inciting Chinese Patriotism
Overseas."
TORONTO¡ªThe Dalai Lama began his visit to the U.S. last week with an
appeal to Chinese-language media overseas to re****t objectively on the
turmoil in Tibet. In a Saturday meeting with Chinese press in Seattle,
he called the accusations against him "fabrications" intended to
"demonize" him and his people.
"I very much hoped to meet with overseas Chinese media because at this
time we really need outside help to ease the situation," he was quoted
as saying.
The Dalai's appeal may be founded in concerns over the slant taken by
several major Chinese-language media outlets in North America, which
have largely parroted the communist party's line on Tibet.
Tibetans fear one-sided re****ting is fueling Chinese resentment toward
followers of the Dalai Lama.
Take for example, Sing Tao Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper in Canada
owned by Torstar Corp., the publisher of Canada's largest circulation
English-language daily, The Toronto Star.
On Sunday, Sing Tao and Toronto Star each ran the same story at the top
of their front page, an article by Toronto Star immigration and
diversity re****ter Nicholas Keung. Sing Tao labeled the article "Special
from The Toronto Star ," but it had some noticeable differences from
Keung's original as it appeared in the Star.
The Star ran the story under the headline "Chinese Canadians Conflicted
on Tibet." The article probed the feelings some Chinese Canadians have
in hoping for more human rights in their homeland while also feeling
nationalist sentiment towards the upcoming Olympics and what they
perceive as interference by Tibetan protesters.
The Star also quoted observers ¨C including the publisher of this
newspaper, Cindy Gu ¨C who said the Chinese regime has intentionally
confused national pride with sup****t for the communist party its
policies, such as its handling of Tibet.
Those comments were cut in the Sing Tao version, which used instead a
page-width headline: "The West Attacks China With Tibet Issue, Inciting
Chinese Patriotism Overseas."
By the time Sing Tao's editors were through with the story, criticism of
the Chinese regime had been removed. There was no mention of an effort
to distort facts to stir up nationalism. Instead, the story opened with
two paragraphs apparently added by Sing Tao editors, berating Western
news coverage and critics of the crackdown in Tibet.
"When China is suppressed by the West," it read, "overseas Chinese
generally feel outrage, and would not forget to step forward to defend
China." Sing Tao offered as examples of this "suppression," Western
media's re****ts on the Tibet crackdown and the recent protests that met
the Olympic Torch.
The article continued: "Most Mainland Chinese immigrants stand on the
side of the Chinese government, sup****ting the suppression of the
rampant Tibet independent forces before the Beijing summer Olympics."
Even critics of Chinese human rights "think it is not necessary for the
West to use Olympics to 'bash' China," it said.
Sing Tao's managing editor, Wilson Chan, defended the changes. Chan said
the radical revision of the headline fell within an editor's right to
use whatever headline best suited the story.
"Different editors have different readings; if this is the way the
editor reads into it, then it's the way he reads into it," said Chan.
He said criticism of the regime was cut because some of these comments
were "not something new." He also said these quotes appeared toward the
bottom of the article, where editors frequently cut if a story runs too
long.
But Sing Tao's cuts included some mid-article paragraphs quoting a
Chinese broadcaster on how Chinese nationalism had begun to erode the
sup****t for democracy in Hong Kong.
Sing Tao's editors also broke the article into sections under four
conspicuously pro-Beijing subheadings: "Harming Chinese People," "China
Is Like a Mother," "Human Rights Will Gradually Improve," and "Unfair to
China."
The editors appear to also have tampered with quotes.
Comparing the Sing Tao version with the original Toronto Star article,
The Epoch Times noticed that Sing Tao appears to have added "so-called"
in front of "human rights violations" in a quote from the radio
broadcaster.
And "Tibetans" were changed to "Tibetan separatists" in the comments
from a Markham investment advisor.
Chan denied there was any significant change to the radio broadcaster's
quote and he said all Chinese media use the phrase "Tibetan
separatists," but could not explain why it was added to the middle of a
quote.
"We try to get close to the original meaning itself; we don't try to
distort the story," he said.
Calls to the re****ter who wrote the Toronto Star story and to Carol
Peddie, vice-president of the Torstar venture company that overseas Sing
Tao, were not returned.
Although in Canada Sing Tao is majority owned by Torstar, the newspaper
maintains an editorial relation****p with the parent Sing Tao company in
Hong Kong, Sing Tao News Group.
The Chairman of Sing Tao News Group, Charles Ho, is a member of the
Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference, a distinction reserved for the Chinese Communist Party's
closest allies.
The Jamestown Foundation, a U.S.-based think-tank that monitors threats
to democracy and freedom, analyzed Beijing's influence on overseas
Chinese media in 2001.
It found that the Sing Tao Daily and three other Chinese newspapers were
under the direct influence of the Chinese communist government.
"As preparation for Hong Kong's return to China in 1997, the Chinese
government made vigorous attempts in the early 1990s to purchase several
major media agencies in Hong Kong. This was done through the use of
third-party merchants who have close business ties with China," said the
re****t.
In the case of Sing Tao, the regime provided financial help to
then-owner Sally Aw Sian, who ran into a financial crisis in the late
1980s, Jamestown said. What followed was the paper's transformation into
a pro-communist paper that even saw a former editor of The People's
Daily (the Chinese regime's official mouthpiece) take the helm.
According to political commentator Dr. Kengchit So, who emigrated from
Hong Kong and now lives in Toronto, Sing Tao has changed to become one
of the most pro-communist-party newspapers in Hong Kong.
So used to have a political column in global edition of Sing Tao in
which he frequently criticized the Chinese government. The column was
cut and So says an editor told him it was because then-owner Sally Aw
Sian was preparing to meet with Chinese communist party chairman Jiang
Zemin.
In fact, Sunday's Sing Tao story was far from an isolated pro-Beijing
article.
The newspaper's website includes a special section devoted to the
unfolding crises in Tibet. The tone in many of the stories is similar to
that in state-run Chinese press: official Chinese sources are quoted
prominently, few if any mentions are made of the Tibetan's grievances
against the Chinese regime, and re****ts of suffering of Han Chinese (the
majority Chinese ethnicity) are frequent, along with quotes from
re****ted victims denouncing the Tibetan protesters.
The nationalism theme is also common, for example, in this headline on
March 28: "Emotional and Teary Attendees Sing Loudly 'My Chinese Heart,'
as 2000 Chinese Join Anti-Tibetan Independence Rally."
Another headline on April 7 read, "Dalai Lama's List of Death Cases Said
to Be Fabricated."
And another on April 9: "Tibetan Government in Exile: Helpless to
Restrain Violence."
Cheuk Kwan, chair of the Toronto Association for democracy in China said
the fact that Chinese media in Canada parrot the Chinese Communist
Party's line one of the main reasons Canada is seeing large
demonstrations of Chinese people denouncing Western media's coverage of
Tibet.
Demonstrators in Toronto and Ottawa have also denounced the West's push
for improved human rights in China and a peaceful resolution to the
unrest in Tibet, regarding such statements as sup****t for Tibetan
separatism.
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