(Clearwisdom.net) At the end of last year, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that it had approved nine Chinese Communist Party (CCP) TV stations to enter Canada, even though clear evidence showed that these stations broadcasted news which slandered Falun Gong and instigated violence and hatred against the practice. Some Canadian members of Parliament (MP) and media voiced their disagreement with the CRTC decision.
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On February 21, some Canadian Chinese in Ottawa protested the decision outside CRTC and Capitol Hill, respectively. MP Bill Siksay joined the group to show his support.
Siksay said: "We need the government to act on this. At the very minimum there needs to be some requirement for monitoring to make sure that there isn't a hateful message being spread by media outlets in Canada."
Canadian Media Exposes that CCP Uses State-Controlled Media to Instigate Hatred
On February 5, Vue Weekly published an article which detailed how the CCP has been using state-controlled media to instigate hatred. Below is an excerpt from the article:
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The pageantry of Chinese media is probably unmatched by any North American broadcaster. The carefully planned photo-ops that are coordinated, filmed and authorized by different organs of the state, along with the proliferation of handshakes, bilateral agreements and flower arrangements on the evening news make up an elaborate show unlike anything seen on CBC Newsworld or CNN.
It is an approach to news broadcasting most Canadians have likely never experienced, given how (relatively) spoiled we are to have easy access to a variety of media sources. But we are about to have a chance to get used to something a little different, as the CRTC has recently approved a package of nine digital channels from China, including news and entertainment in Mandarin, Cantonese and Fujianese.
The "Great Wall Package" has been contentious from its proposal in 2005.
Controversy has mainly arisen due to fears that the channels will stifle homegrown Chinese media and that the state-controlled networks demonstrate a flagrant bias against groups like pro-independence Taiwanese and Tibetans.
But the most vocal opposition has come from groups representing the target of the Communist Party of China's highest profile propaganda war in Canada: the Falun Gong.
In the Western world, sympathies where they exist are mostly with the Falun Gong. Canadians would probably be surprised to learn how sharply different perceptions of the group are in the Middle Kingdom, however.
The Chinese government has justified its campaign to discredit and undermine the Falun Gong by frequently referring to incidents like the 2001 self-immolation of five practitioners in Tiananmen Square and this campaign has, for the most part, gone on with the assent of the Chinese public. [See http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/special_column/self-immolation.html for the truth of the Staged "Self-Immolation" incident-ed.] Much of the credit for this acceptance can be chalked up to the Communist Party of China's ability to wage high-stakes battles over perceptions through the state-run media.
For a country with around a quarter of the world's population, the incredibly narrow band of media available in mainland China is astonishing.
"The media serves the government, and it always has rosy news about the country," said one Chinese student studying in Canada, who declined to be named.
"They are the mouthpiece of the government, so this is quite normal I guess."
Because all news broadcast and printed in China must first be vetted by state news agency Xinhua, it is easy for the government to filter, tweak and manipulate the information people receive through channels like CCTV-4, its main international Mandarin-language service. It also makes it relatively simple for the government to muscle public support or derision for groups like the Falun Gong.
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In the same way that the second plane crashing into the World Trade Centre in 2001 has become visual shorthand for complex American attitudes towards al Qaeda, the Middle East and the war on terror, endlessly played (and fiercely debated) video of the self-immolators in Tiananmen Square has become emblematic of the distress, revulsion and sheer lack of comprehension the Communist Party of China wishes to incite in the eyes of the Chinese people towards Falun Gong practitioners.
It has, for the most part, been successful: these are the images most likely to spring to Chinese minds when hearing the phrase "Falun Gong," certainly not the peaceful caucasians meditating in Epoch Times stories many Canadians would be familiar with. [...]
Within a Canadian context, however, this portrayal is unlikely to hold water. Former Edmonton-area Liberal Member of Parliament David Kilgour's damning 2006 report on human rights abuses of Falun Gong practitioners in China and allegations of involuntary organ harvesting of executed state prisoners are more likely to stick in people's minds.
Category: April 25 Events
