A piece of good news in a horrific week
The world’s daily newspaper about China | October 14, 2023
Not an easy week in the news business | ||
After the horrific Hamas attacks on Israel last Saturday, the week came to a close in Beijing with a knife attack on an employee of Israel’s embassy.
Such events present journalists with many ethical dilemmas. How do you frame the news? What vocabulary do you use? I would call it a terrorist attack, but the Chinese Foreign Ministry referred to it as an “escalation of tensions between Palestine and Israel.” Images present further problems. On Monday, when we published a report on China’s reaction to the Hamas attacks, there were very few newswire photographs of the attacks themselves. We initially used an image of a building in Gaza that had been hit by a missile fired as part of Israel’s first response. It seemed inappropriate, and we changed it for a photo of a burning car in Ashkelon, Israel, after it was struck by a Hamas rocket on Saturday. One reader noticed, and emailed me to accuse us of downplaying the suffering of the Palestinian people. Emotions are running high around the world about these events, but we face many of the same problems in our daily reporting on China. How should we frame our stories? Do we do enough reporting on human rights abuses and other negative aspects of China, or too much? Do we do enough reporting on the many things the Chinese government gets right, or too much? Finding the right balance is a daily struggle for us, and we hope we get it right more often than we get it wrong. And we’re always open to feedback and especially constructive criticism. Just reply to this email to reach my personal inbox, or write to editors@thechinaproject.com to email our entire editorial team. Finally, in today’s newsletter, we decided to highlight one piece of good news from China this week: the release of Australian journalist Chéng Lěi 成蕾 after nearly three years behind bars in China. If you’re not already a subscriber, sign up for our Daily Dispatch, or our free Weekly.14,
|
THIS WEEK’S NEWS | |||
|
PHRASE OF WEEK | |||
|
FEATURED ON THE CHINA PROJECT | |||
|
SOCIETY AND CULTURE | |||
|
SINICA PODCAST NETWORK | |||
|