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Ed Webb

Times Editorial = Downright Stupid « A. Fine Blog - 0 views

afine2.wordpress.com/...mes-editorial-downright-stupid

media business future

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Jan 09 - Cached
  • So, the fundamental premise of the need to endow newspapers and preserve them at public expense is that false information exists on the Internet? Of course it does, as it does on TV, on the radio (should we also consider endowing Rush?) in magazines, and in many, many newspapers. Which media would the authors like to choose as being least likely to contain false information? And which medium do they think did the best job of  bringing the lies and corruption of the Bush Administration to light — hint, don’t look at newspapers, Josh Micah Marshall and his Talking Points Memo website would be a much better bet.
Ed Webb

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic(July/August 2008) - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...google

google technology media brain stupid culture

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 19 Mar 09
     
    What the Internet is doing to our brains - mentioned by David Faris on 3/19
Ed Webb

NEIL MACKAY'S BIG READ: 'Scotland didn't have empire done to it, Scotland did empire to... - 0 views

www.heraldscotland.com/...pt-fighting-decolonise-history

UK Britain history museum heritage Egypt orientalism empire

shared by Ed Webb on 04 May 22 - No Cached
  • Glasgow’s Dr Campbell Price is British TV’s go-to guy when it comes to ancient Egypt. But the study is riddled with racism and he wants to drag the world of mummies into the 21st century … and he doesn’t care if you call him ‘woke’.
  • Price is at the forefront of the fight to ‘decolonise’ the study of Ancient Egypt and drag it into the 21st century. He wants the discipline to confront its history of racism and empire, and he’s not shy about apportioning a fair amount of blame on Scotland and its own role in Britain’s colonial adventures.
  • the study of Ancient Egypt was founded by colonialists from Britain and France in the early 1800s and it still hasn’t shaken off the baggage of the past. There’s a lingering sense that Egyptians are considered unable or incapable of studying their own history without the assistance of white, western academics who are really the people best suited to the discipline. The whiff of racism and a “white saviour narrative” still hangs in the air, he feels.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • “There’s this conceit,” he says, “that archaeologists - gung-ho western, bearded, white, elite, cis-gendered, ostensibly heterosexual - go to Egypt and ‘discover’ Ancient Egypt because the people, ordinary Egyptians, are too stupid.” He adds: “Ancient Egypt was never ‘lost’.”
  • The “standard colonial narrative”, he says, portrays Egypt as “brilliant - a proto-British empire”. Egyptologists used terms like ‘empire’ and ‘viceroy’ to describe the government of the Pharaohs. Students were taught that “the Ancient Egyptians had a ‘Viceroy of Nubia’ - where the hell is the term ‘viceroy’ coming from?” Price asks. “It’s from the British experience of empire”. This explains why many British academics put Egypt on a pedestal as the greatest of all ancient civilisations.
  • in the imperial age when Britons were travelling to India they would go through the Suez Canal. “You might take a few days and go and visit Egypt. So it’s colonial high noon,”
  • British archaeologist Howard Carter led the dig that opened Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 - an event which turbo-charged interest in Egyptology and had a huge cultural impact on world, even leading to the creation of movies like The Mummy starring Boris Karloff in 1932. “Some early exhibitions quite literally feel like the spoils of empire,” says Price. “In some cases, it’s literally the spoils - like the Rosetta Stone which was seized from the French.”
  • Price is chair of the board of trustees with the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) - an organisation, he says, which is “doing a lot of work of self-criticism, self-reflection and self-critique”. The EES, which was established in 1882 at the height of empire and just prior to the British invasion, is now “attempting to unpack colonialism in Egypt”.
  • “the British and French cooked up a system” called ‘finds-division’ or ‘partage’. “Notionally,” he says, “the best 50% of things that come out of the ground go to the National Collection in Cairo, but then up to 50% of what is thought to be ‘surplus to requirements’ or duplicate can leave with archaeologists. So that’s how Manchester has 18,000 objects from Egypt and Sudan - mostly through finds-division.
  • It was legal between the 1880s and 1970s, but it was at a time when mostly the Egyptian government was controlled by the British and French, and the Egyptian government had to repay the massive debt of building the Suez Canal.
  • “some people will tell you, some well known Egyptologists, that you should burn copies of ‘A Thousand Miles Up the Nile’ because it contains racist material. But the society is actually working on a critical re-edition, where there’s a new introduction to put the book in context. I firmly believe, and the trustees firmly believe, you can’t just bury the past. You’ve got to try and face it and constructively critique it. I’m not arguing for cancelling anyone. I’m not arguing for trying to ignore it. I’m saying ‘let’s have a conversation’.”
  • Unlike many nations which had art looted by western powers, Egypt “isn’t particularly interested” in the repatriation debate except when it comes to “a few very exceptional objects like Nefertiti’s Bust and the Rosetta Stone”. Price adds: “Repatriation can sometimes be a bit of an echo chamber for western [people]. It doesn’t necessarily relate always to the concerns of indigenous groups, or people who live in places like Egypt.”
  • There’s a funny attitude, where Scots kind of distance themselves and say, ‘oh well, you know, we were colonised first. The English came in, and we’re the victims’. Based on my work on the history of colonialism in Egypt, Scottish people are more than well-represented. They are disproportionately represented in the cogs of the imperial project with Scottish diplomats, engineers and soldiers … There’s a sense that empire was ‘done to’ Scotland, when in fact Scotland ‘did’ empire to other people … We put this stuff on the English and say it was the English … Scots appear surprisingly commonly in the imperial machinery in Egypt.
  • Price has little time for the use of the word ‘woke’ as an insult, as to him it simply means trying to do the right thing professionally. He adds that he feels “fortunate” that Manchester Museum, where he works, is also having the same “conversations” about confronting the legacy of the past.
  • British egyptology is “more open” to change, Price says than most other western nations with a history of the discipline. “We’re on the winning side of the argument. The tide has turned. You cannot pretend you can enjoy your secluded cocktail terrace in the middle of Cairo and not expect to hear critical evaluation of colonial experiences.”
  • Most of the workers who built the pyramids weren’t slaves - they were paid for their efforts, he points out. The slave stories of the Bible, though, lead to “another form of colonialism - Orientalism”, which depicts the rulers of the east as either exotic and mysterious or brutal and cruel. The notion of “the Oriental despot comes from the Bible: Pharaoh as a despot … The way in the Bible, that the pharaoh is cast as a baddie, reverberates”.
  • Price is also incensed by the current pseudo-science trend for conspiracy theories claiming that aliens built the pyramids - the type of unfounded material aired on over-the-top documentaries like ‘Ancient Aliens’. “It’s racist,” he says, “very racist.” He notes that there’s a hashtag on Twitter called ‘CancelAncientAliens’. The wild alien theory is “based on the assumption that ancient people were too stupid to have [built the pyramids] themselves and so it had to be some outside force. So to be clear in the interests of global parity and justice: the ancient Egyptians were an African people who built absolutely stunning monuments. Get over it.”
  • There is no simple answer, or history - and I think we insult museum audiences if we assume they want an overly simplified story. ‘Ancient Egypt’ is undoubtedly one of the most popular parts of a museum. By asking questions about how colonialism formed our idea of what ‘Ancient Egypt’ was, not just how it got to be in cities like Glasgow and Manchester, I think we can begin to address questions of global inequality.
  • “Egypt more than Greece, Rome or other parts of the world, has existed as both ‘Oriental other’ and ‘western ancestor’ - that is why the colonial dialogue is so intense - and Egyptology is, in a sense, the exemplary ‘colonial discipline’, just as the British Consul Lord Cromer [consul-general in Egypt from 1883] said Egypt should be the exemplary colony.
Ed Webb

Egyptian Chronicles: Another Bad Day for Media in #Egypt : #YouTube , Offensive cartoon... - 2 views

egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/...ad-day-for-media-in-egypt.html

Egypt media censorship judiciary law MB ikhwan TV television

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Speaking about Religion and media censorship. Al Masry Al Youm has officially apologized  for the daring cover of Assyasy Magazine "The Politician magazine" latest issue. Here is the daring cover which is the product of famous revolutionary cartoonist Ahmed Nady. The controversial cover by Ahmed Nady The cover shows those who signed Al Azhar document to denounce violence completely naked and in their hands wine glasses and in the back Mohamed Morsi tells a strong and enormous CSF officer to act as he wants as there is no more political cover for the protesters
  • Many activists criticized the political activists and parties participated in the document accusing them of dumping the protesters alone facing the police violence. This is the first time the Sheikh of Al Azhar and the Church representative are  being shown naked like that. According to Ahmed Nady , the cartoonist he got a tip that Al Masry Al Youm administration has decided to pull the issue from the market after it got an objection from the Church on how a church man would appear like that in a cartoon on cover of a magazine.
  • it seems that administration of Al Masry Al Youm does not want to break any taboos anymore
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  • TV hosts Dina Abdel Fatah and Wael Al Abrashi will be interrogate at the public prosecution office as they are accused of promoting Black Bloc culture in Egypt !! Wael Al Abrashi claimed that he spoke to Black Bloc members on Dream TV2 while Dina Abdel Fatah hosted alleged Black Bloc Members in her show on Tahrir TV. Of course the alleged and self proclaimed Black Bloc Facebook pages and twitter accounts denied that these were members in the Black Block.
  • there is a long list of TV hosts and journalists like Mahmoud Saad , Lamis El Hadidy and Mona Shazly as well their producers. These TV hosts are accused of letting their guests insult the judges and judiciary in Egypt !!
  • Abdel Fatah is being summoned after his live TV confrontation with minister of justice Ahmed Mekki last Saturday during the Ultras trial on CBC channel's morning show
  • Former MP Mostafa Al Naggar was summoned to appear in front of the magistrate for the same charge : Insulting judiciary !!!
  • to be accused of promoting Black Bloc in Egypt !! For God sake what kind of charge this is !?
  • a tip I got from a dear friend that the judges who reported that long list to the ministry of justice are the Muslim brotherhood's Judges for Egypt group !!! You have to know that the number of "Insulting the president" lawsuits in time of Morsi's rule "6 months"  exceeded all the lawsuits filed isnce 1892 when that stupid charged entered our legal system !! I have got nothing to say more. This is not the Egypt we want.
Ed Webb

Monsters of Our Own Imaginings | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...russels-bombings-islamic-state

terror terrorism foreignpolicy IR analysis opinion GWOT walt Belgium ISIS Qaeda

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Terrorist attacks have occurred in Europe, America, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many other places, and no level of surveillance, police presence, border controls, drone strikes, targeted killings, or enhanced interrogation is going to prevent every one of them. Even if we could provide absolutely air-tight protection around one type of target, others targets would remain exposed
  • the belief that we could eliminate the danger entirely is no more realistic than thinking better health care will grant you eternal life. For this reason, condemning politicians for failing to prevent every single attack is counterproductive — and possibly dangerous — because it encourages leaders to go overboard in the pursuit of perfect security and to waste time and money that could be better spent on other things. Even worse, the fear of being blamed for “not doing enough” will lead some leaders to take steps that make the problem worse — like bombing distant countries — merely to look and sound tough and resolute.
  • there is no magic key to stopping terrorism because the motivations for it are so varied. Sometimes it stems from anger and opposition to foreign occupation or perceived foreign interference — as with the Tamil Tigers, Irish Republican Army, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, or Hamas. In other cases, it arises from opposition to a corrupt and despised ruling elite. Or it could be both: Osama bin Laden was equally angry at “crusader” nations for interfering in the Muslim world and at the Arab governments he believed were in cahoots with them. In the West, homegrown terrorists such as Anders Breivik or Timothy McVeigh are driven to mass murder by misguided anger at political systems they (falsely) believe are betraying their nation’s core values. Sometimes terrorism arises from perverted religious beliefs; at other times the motivating ideology is wholly secular. Because so many different grievances can lead individuals or groups to employ terrorist methods, there is no single policy response that could make the problem disappear forever.
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  • Compared with other risks to human life and well-being, contemporary international terrorism remains a minor problem
  • The Islamic State killed 31 people in Brussels on Tuesday, but more than half a billion people in Europe were just fine on that day. So when the British government raised the “threat level” and told its citizens to avoid “all but essential travel” to Belgium following Tuesday’s attacks, it is demonstrating a decidedly non-Churchillian panic. Needless to say, that is precisely what groups like the Islamic State want to provoke.
  • the same toxic blend of media and politics that brought us Donald Trump’s candidacy makes it nearly impossible to have a rational assessment of terrorism
  • Newspapers, radio, cable news channels, and assorted websites all live for events like this, and they know that hyping the danger will keep people reading, listening, and watching. The Islamic State and its partners really couldn’t ask for a better ally, because overheated media coverage makes weak groups seem more powerful than they really are and helps convince the public they are at greater risk than is in fact the case. As long as media coverage continues to provide the Islamic State et al. with such free and effective publicity, why should these groups ever abandon such tactics?
  • The Islamic State wouldn’t have to use terrorism if it were strong enough to advance its cause through normal means or if its message were attractive enough to command the loyalty of more than a miniscule fraction of the world’s population (or the world’s Muslims, for that matter). Because it lacks abundant resources and its message is toxic to most people, the Islamic State has to rely on suicide attacks, beheadings, and violent videos to try to scare us into doing something stupid. The Islamic State cannot conquer Europe and impose its weird version of Islam on the more than 500 million people who live there; the most it can hope for is to get European countries to do self-destructive things to themselves in response. Similarly, neither al Qaeda, the Islamic State, nor other extremists could destroy the U.S. economy, undermine the U.S. military, or weaken American resolve directly; but they did achieve some of their goals when they provoked us into invading Iraq and when they convinced two presidents to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the bottomless pit in Afghanistan.
  • Terrorism is not really the problem; the problem is how we respond to it
  • At the moment, the challenge of contemporary terrorism seems to be bringing out not the best in the West — but the worst. Instead of resolution and grit, we get bluster and hyperbole. Instead of measured threat assessments, patient and careful strategizing, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be achieved, we get symbolic gestures, the abandonment of our own principles, and political posturing.
  • how would a grown-up like Marshall or Dwight D. Eisenhower respond to this danger? No doubt they’d see it as a serious problem, but anyone who had witnessed the carnage of a world war would not be cowed by intermittent acts of extremist violence, no matter how shocking they are to our sensibilities. They’d use the bully pulpit to shame the fearmongers on Fox and CNN, and they’d never miss an opportunity to remind us that the danger is not, in fact, that great and that we should not, and cannot, live our lives in fear of every shadow and in thrall to monsters of our own imaginings. They would encourage us to live our daily lives as we always have, confident that our societies possess a strength and resilience that will easily outlast the weak and timorous groups that are trying to disrupt us. And then, this summer, they’d take a European vacation.
Ed Webb

25 January is an honourable popular revolution: Egypt's president tells activists - Pol... - 1 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...92223.aspx

Egypt media youth politics

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • According to a presidential statement, the four hour meeting was arranged to discuss a general sentiment among youth who took part in the January revolution that they are being targeted with an intense defaming campaign
  • Some of the attendees accused several media outlets of launching a smear campaign against them. They also criticised the "poor performance" of the Egyptian state TV
  • Private TV channels and newspapers known to be affiliated with the Mubarak's regime have been accusing activists of the January 25 revolution of being foreign agents or of being paid to cause unrest in Egypt.
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  • According to a statement issued by the Rebel campaign, of which three of its members attended Tuesday's meeting, Mansour has slammed the media attack against revolutionaries as "political stupidity," saying a media code of ethics will soon be issued in collaboration with media figures and the National Council for Human Rights
  • The meeting also tackled the role of the police, with many of the attendees accusing it of enforcing what they saw as "systematic measures" similar to the notorious ones practiced by the apparatus prior to the revolution. Mansour, however, ruled out that any violence practiced by the police is systematic. He also requested a list of those claimed to have been randomly arrested without charges.
  • Mansour went on to urge those present to engage with society through political activities to ensure that no force solely dominate the political scene. "You [the youth] should work on preserving the gains of the revolution that no one from the corrupt regimes should be allowed to obtain," said Mansour, who added that the differences between political groups, lack of organisation and failure to interact with the population could give a chance to "the unworthy to win the coming parliamentary elections."
Ed Webb

Custard Thrown On Mandelson, Business Secretary Hit In Face By Anti-Heathrow Striker's ... - 0 views

news.sky.com/...200903115235839

activism environment UK custard mandelson

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Mar 09 - Cached
  • I don't want to get up early in the morning and throw custard at Peter Mandelson but I don't have a choice because democracy has failed us
  • Plane Stupid has launched a series of high profile stunts in recent years against the Government's environmental policies, including sit-in protests bringing Stansted and Aberdeen airports to a stand-still.
  • Ed Webb on 06 Mar 09
     
    How to create media spectacle to get attention to one's cause...
Ed Webb

Al Jazeera English - IRAN: AFTER THE REVOLUTION - Iranian Arabs seek equal rights - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...200812691745418706.html

shared by Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09 - No Cached
  • Ahwazi Arabs have not been included in Iran's economic development and prosperity derived from oil exports, according to a 2007 Human Rights report published by civil rights organisations in Europe in coordination with the Belgium–based Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
  • I do not think there is an official will to marginalise Iranian Arabs or deny them their basic rights
  • administrative inefficiencies are often wrongly blamed on religious or ethnic discrimination
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  • "In Iran for example, this problem is not only with Arabs but with Kurds ... and other ethnicities as well, and all these groups live in far rural areas, and their complaints are usually taken from [a] political point of view."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
       
      Is this a case of essentially class struggles, or rural-urban divides, being mapped onto identity politics as a mobilizable issue? If so, why? Is it the international discourse of human rights and self-determination? Is it the primordial connection or glue of ethnic and other groups?
  • rumoured that Tehran wanted to disperse the Arab communities throughout Iran.
  • Amir al-Musawi, an Iranian political analyst and former consultant to the ministry of defence, says foreign governments have been fuelling dissent in Ahwaz. "The Ahwazi people are supporters of the Iranian revolution, but there are some mercenaries who have been funded by foreign powers to create a situation where it appears there is a falling out between Iranian Arabs and the government," he said. "We know the British in Basra are fuelling some Ahwazi mercenary acts but we are sure they will get nowhere."
  • a mixed Shia and Sunni community
  • Ahwazi Arabs have traditionally attempted to mark Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar in which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, in conjunction with Sunni Arab countries.
  • "Iran's history is characterised by rich debate over the meaning of Shia doctrine and the implications of theology, and much of this diversity has been suffocated in the Islamic Republic,"
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
       
      States tend to prefer a single orthodoxy over a 'rich debate.'
  • "Iranians believe that Arabs led the Muslim nation for 1,000 years, and the Turks had that opportunity for several centuries until World War One. Tehran thinks the time has come for it to lead the Muslim world."
  • "In 1980 when the Iraqi army attacked Ahwazi cities, Ahwazi Arabs defended their cities despite the fact they had the chance to get annexed to an Arab country, Iraq. It is true the idea appealed to some Ahwazis but they were [a] minority," al-Musawi told Al Jazeera. Al-Seyed Nima denied that Ahwazis willingly fought with the Iranian army and said they had been hired as mercenaries or forced to enlist.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 13 Feb 09
       
      Notice that history matters hugely in these debates about identity, and becomes mobilized in particular causes.
  • Zhaleh United States 11/02/2009 I was born and raised in Khouzestan and this is the first time I hear iranian arabs being refered to as Ahwazi. Ahwaz is a city with mix population. If you see less improvement in Khouzestan than rest of the country is because this area was worst hit by 8 years of Iran/Iraq war and not because half of the population are arabs. Amnesty International needs to define what they see as discrimination. In Iran arabs can dress in their traditional attire, free to speak their language. Pure nonsense....
  • Chris Sweden 11/02/2009 To Mike, Canada Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1% Simple facts is stupid to lie about
  • minorities are not able to have equal rights in any country
  • I am an Azeri (Turkish Iranian) and I do NOT feel culturaly repressed!
Ed Webb

Bad Science » Er, "help". Legal Chill from LBC 97.3 and "Global Radio" over J... - 0 views

www.badscience.net/...ni-barnetts-mmr-scaremongering

censorship idiocy

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Feb 09 - Cached
  • The debate here is not about the dangers of MMR, but the dangers of the media.
  • Lastly, I write for a hobby, I can honestly say it never occurred to me when I took an excerpt of audio, broadcast on the airwaves into kitchens and cars, and made a brief blog post about it, that this could be considered “theft”. I welcome people lifting my output, I expect them to link back to me so people can find more of the same, and I am glad when people use my ideas and analyses, even (with a fleeting grudge) unattributed: that is what they are there for. To me, these people with their lawyers, and their millions, are from another world. The fact that this has gone from a small blog post about a stupid radio clip to a blogstorm is a bit weird too, but excellent for getting a wider discussion going about the way that the media misrepresent health risks, and create scares.
  • ricockulously
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  • like communicating with someone from another universe.
  • Ed Webb on 10 Feb 09
     
    Notice that it is not only in authoritarian regimes that debate can be squashed.
Ed Webb

How a crude sex joke revived a partisan fight in Israel - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the ... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...zionist-camp-shaffir-feud.html

Israel media television TV satire news sexism gender politics analysis opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova, a member of Shaffir’s party, raised the gauntlet March 2 by filing a sexual harassment complaint against Channel 20 and the show with the Council for Cable and Satellite TV. Svetlova claims that Segal and the members of the panel violated a clause in the law that defines sexual harassment as a degrading or derogatory comment made because of the subject’s gender or sexuality. It will be interesting to see how the council handles Svetlova’s complaint, especially when dealing with freedom of expression and satire.
  • Segal is refusing to apologize. He will simply admit that it was a stupid and tasteless joke. During a bellicose interview with Army Radio on March 3, Segal shifted the debate to the political arena, turning it into an argument between right and left. He said, among other things, that the left-wing media was being hypocritical. He has no reason to apologize, he claimed, just as the popular satirical TV show "Eretz Nehederet" ("A Wonderful Land") was not asked to apologize for the sexual connotations of their jokes about right-wing ministers such as Ayelet Shaked (HaBayit HaYehudi) and Tzipi Hotoveli (Likud). When asked about why he was doing his satire on a news show, especially on one devoted to Jewish heritage, Segal responded that he does not make a firm distinction between current events, lighter news and humor. Toward the end of his interview, he said, “Personally, I feel bad that she was hurt. If only she would have left it as a personal insult, instead of bringing in sexual harassment. … But this is an attempt to silence Channel 20.”
Ed Webb

China Expands Media Dominance in Africa - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...nance-in-africa-a-1272274.html

media China Africa Kenya

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • Liao Liang's mission in the Kenyan capital is hardly confidential: As a senior editor of the China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of Chinese state television, his task is that of shining a positive light on his country's ambitious activities -- particularly those in Africa, where China's reputation has suffered as its footprint has grown.
  • "It's an apartheid system," he says, with the Chinese at the top, then the whites, then the blacks and at the very bottom are the Kenyans. "We have to let the Chinese go first in the restrooms and we're only allowed to eat in the cafeteria after 1 p.m., after they have eaten. They treat us like their inferiors." Sometimes, James M. says, he only receives half of his contractual editor's salary of 2,000 euros per month. He says he is penalized 2,000 shillings - around 17 euros - for every mistake in his stories, including typos.
  • CGTN journalists aren't just there to ward off criticism of China's expansion in Africa but also to break the West's media dominance. The broadcaster has a similar mission in Africa as Russia's state broadcaster RT does in Europe.
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  • According to one survey, the majority of Africans welcome the Chinese involvement, but critics, such as the Senegalese author Adama Gaye, have warned of a new form of colonialism
  • China has thrown its support behind diplomatic initiatives and has contributed around 2,500 troops to UN peacekeeping missions in Congo, South Sudan and Mali. China is also helping with efforts to combat the Ebola epidemic and it even funded the construction of the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. The country has also established 49 Confucius Institutes across the continent, which promote the Chinese language and culture. At the heart of China's Going Out policy is a media offensive launched in March 2018, an initiative coordinated by the broadcast group Voice of China and carefully monitored by Communist Party censors. In addition, the state-run news agency Xinhua was expanded and now claims to be the largest news wire in the world.
  • Every year, 1,000 African journalists take part in training programs in China and Chinese investors have been investing heavily in African media outlets. The TV station StarTimes now broadcasts its paid offerings in 30 African countries and declares itself to be the most influential digital channel on the continent.
  • it is the only television station in the world that broadcasts in all six official UN languages. It has 79 million Facebook followers, which is roughly as many as the BBC and CNN combined
  • CGTN employs around 150 people, including journalists from China, South Africa, Britain, Nigeria and Kenya, yet even when promised anonymity, nobody initially agreed to speak with DER SPIEGEL. "They're afraid of Liao," an employee would later say.
  • "We don't produce independent journalism, but pure propaganda by order of the Communist Party." He says the goal is that of presenting the most harmonious image possible of China's activities in Africa, including construction sites full of smiling workers and positive coverage of massive endeavors like dams and other mega-projects along with humanitarian aid contributions.
  • He shows a text message that he recently received from the boss: "No reports on the chaos!" The reference was to political disturbances in a country in Africa.
  • particularly sensitive texts have to be reviewed in Beijing and if the censors disapprove, the stories are killed. "Criticism of the government, human rights issues or analysis of the growing amount of African debt held by the Chinese are all taboo,"
  • In September, the journalist Azad Essa reported on China's oppression of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in China, and was fired afterward. His employer, Independent Media, is the second-largest media outlet in South Africa. And since 2013, a Chinese investor has held a 20-percent stake
  • "We have good relations with the Chinese, even if they would rather stick to themselves." Mwaura is a 40-year-old Kenyan reporter who works for the Xinhua news agency and his view of the situation is much less dark. He believes that local media outlets poison relations with the Chinese because they don't understand Chinese culture and are still under the influence of British colonial attitudes. Mwaura says China's involvement in Africa is a win-win scenario that helps bring the continent forward. Claims that China is conquering Africa, he says, are just "stupid chatter" from bloggers who are on the payroll of Western embassies. He views his task as that of providing more optimistic coverage to counter such "negativity."
  • Mwaura says he can write about whatever he wants, but adds that his supervisors ensure that reports are "politically correct," meaning that they reflect the communist worldview. After all, he says, "we are working on behalf of the geopolitical interests of the Chinese state."
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