FCCC Report Criticizes China but US is True Country that Restricts Foreign Media: Analysts

By GT staff reporters

Mar 04, 2023 12:13 AM

Photo: VCG

The annual report by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC), which complained that the foreign media in China endured "strict" COVID controls including "harassment and constant surveillance in 2022," is the organization's latest move to discredit China and the US is the country that really restricts foreign media and adopts double standards on freedom of the press, analysts said.

The FCCC released a report on March 1, in which it accused China of heightening COVID controls as well as restricting foreign journalists on health and safety grounds last year. It mentioned problems faced by foreign journalists, as well as "existing challenges to true freedom of the press in China."

This is not the first time for the FCCC to smear China in its annual report. For example, its annual report in 2020 claimed that working conditions for reporters in China had "deteriorated." The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson refuted this and said such a report made by an organization that China has never recognized was "inappropriate and unwise."

China has always welcomed foreign media to report about the country in a comprehensive and objective way as such reports are an important channel for foreigners to find out about China. China has also been providing support and convenience for international journalists to report about China in accordance with international practices and laws.

However, what some foreign journalists were doing in China went against the professional ethics of journalism. In 2020, China revoked the press credentials of three Wall Street Journal reporters stationed in Beijing after the media organization refused to apologize for publishing an article with the headline "China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia."

Some journalists in the Western media do not have a balanced and objective view of China. On the contrary, they take a position in line with Western ideology, Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Friday.

The media can be a factor in Western authorities' interference in China's internal affairs. "I believe that in other countries, such behavior is unlikely to be accepted," Li said.

Their statements have proved that they have not shaken off their "arrogant attitude" of pointing fingers at China's internal affairs even at the cost of distorting the facts, Li noted.

The FCCC has made such reports to discredit China. Actually, the US, which has touted "freedom of the press," has restricted foreign journalists, arrested domestic journalists and hindered the freedom of the press, analysts said.

In 2020, the US State Department announced it would list four more media outlets - China Central Television, China News Service, People's Daily and Global Times - as foreign missions rather than media outlets in the US, bringing the total number of Chinese media outlets designated as "foreign missions" to nine.

Analysts said that listing Chinese media outlets as foreign missions puts them under the full supervision of US administrative departments and strips them of the rights that they are entitled to under domestic and international law. This political move also exposes the US' double standards on so-called "freedom of speech."

Aside from imposing restrictions on foreign journalists, domestic journalists in the US also face increasing risks. In early February, Evan Lambert, a reporter who was covering a news conference on the train derailment in Ohio, was charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing.