As anyone with half a brain knows, state-run media organisations in totalitarian societies are not the best examples of objective journalism. The English-language newspaper China Daily, which is owned by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, is no exception. Its purpose is not to report, but to disseminate propaganda.
Witness for example a recent televised interview it did to counter reports of state-sponsored forced labour trafficking of Uyghurs from so-called re-education camps. “They also care about us at work and teach us wholeheartedly,” said a cheerful woman purporting to be a Uyghur factory worker in Xinjiang Province. A Chinese academic assures us in the same piece that “we can find out the human rights in Xinjiang is very good”.
Heaven forbid the CCP – which has championed great human rights advances such as The Cultural Revolution, The Great Leap Forward, and The Tiananmen Square Massacre – would have it otherwise.
Australian journalist Sharri Markson actively fans the flames of the Wuhan lab leak conspiracy theory and politicizes the Covid origins investigations with the rightwing circle in the US. #MediaUnlockedpic.twitter.com/NtG5aejHkq
— China Daily (@ChinaDaily) August 3, 2021
The newspaper regularly pushes the risible claim that Covid-19 originated in the United States. Last week, in another televised segment, it targeted The Australian’s investigations writer and Sky News presenter Sharri Markson. In May 2020, she led The Daily Telegraph’s scoop that Western governments had compiled a dossier which examined the possibility the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that the Chinese Government had destroyed and concealed evidence of this.
The China Daily segment is worth watching, if only for the comedy value of the ham actors. “So you can see she (Markson) is a social butterfly in the right-wing circle,” explains journalist Meng Zhe to co-presenter Xu-Pan Yiru, who nods knowingly. “And it infiltrates the global media in a harmful way and inspires more conspiracists to follow her steps,” Yiru says of Markson’s reporting. Between them, the word “conspiracy” is used six times in a segment just under four minutes in length.
In fairness to China Daily, its dissing of Markson’s exposé and deriding her was a repeat of what another state-funded media organisation had done. “Clearly the lab escape story is one the Trump administration wants to be true,” said ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry last year, labelling The Daily Telegraph’s coverage as sensationalist and being in the category of “conspiracy theories”.
Responding to then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s claim that there was a “significant amount of evidence” that the virus originated from the institute, ABC 7.30 chief political correspondent Laura Tingle spoke of “the barking mad nature of some of the statements coming out of the United States”.
Referring to “baseless claims about a virus that was created in a lab and unleashed for nefarious purposes,” ABC PM host Linda Mottram said “the pandemic has been an opportunity for misinformation and disinformation”.
And of course there was the ABC’s health reporter Dr Norman Swan. The theory the virus came from the lab was “so unlikely that you can say definitely that it’s not the case,” he proclaimed, assuring viewers he and other journalists “have looked into this”.
But the smugness disappeared in May this year when US President Joe Biden, having acknowledged that US intelligence agencies were seriously considering the possibility that Covid-19 had escaped from a Wuhan lab, ordered an inquiry into the origins of the virus. Barry has since conceded there is “now expert support for the lab escape theory”. Likewise, Swan has observed “There are increasing signs that the Institute of Virology may well be the source”.
Markson had been vindicated. Her subsequent reports, particularly the revelation that employees from the Institute of Virology were hospitalised in November 2019 after displaying symptoms consistent with Covid-19 in November 2019, have given even more credence to the lab theory.
If anything, ABC should be contrite. But last week Wendy Harmer, co-host of ABC Radio Sydney’s Breakfast, attacked Markson on social media for her reporting. In addition to retweeting the China Daily segment in question, Harmer added an alarmist and pusillanimous comment that is the antithesis of everything journalism is supposed to represent.
“There are few things more emblematic of the days we live in than being drawn into WWIII by Sharri Markson,” she said.
Great point, Wendy. If we leave aside the fact that Covid-19 has infected 204 million people worldwide and killed 4.2 million, and disregard the likelihood it will kill many more, and forget that the Chinese government has stymied an already compromised World Health Organization investigation into the origins of the virus, and ignore the minor inconvenience that comes with half of Australia being in lockdown at the moment, then we do have to ask “Where is the public interest in pursuing this story?”
This partisan imbecility was too much even for Harmer’s followers, and the comrade from Collaroy soon deleted her tweet.
It is no exaggeration to say some ABC presenters view conservative journalism as a bigger threat than Chinese expansionism. Writing in the Washington Post last week, ABC presenter Richard Glover praised tech-giant YouTube for suspending Sky News Australia from posting videos on its platform, ostensibly on the grounds that some of its clips allegedly promoted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments for the virus. “Covid-19 has brought much misery to the world, but — in Australia at least — it’s also breeding a new hostility to those who use misinformation, outrage and conspiracy theories to drive ratings,” he said triumphantly. “For the country who gave the world Murdoch, it’s about time.”
Glover omitted to mention in the same article that The Sydney Morning Herald, which he also writes for, allowed immunologist and University of Newcastle emeritus professor Robert Clancy to pen an op-ed in February which advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in treating Covid. That piece remains online. Nor did he mention that ABC Newcastle allowed Clancy to air his views on hydroxychloroquine that same month. And it did so again only two months ago when he promoted the use of ivermectin, saying its worthiness in treating the virus was “crystal clear”. Audio of both interviews is still accessible on the ABC website. Presumably Glover will demand its removal and will call out the national broadcaster in his next Washington Post column. If not, why not?
For the record, I have not bought into this debate about the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. I have received my AstraZeneca injections, and I encourage everyone to get vaccinated. But I regard with disquiet the thought of tech giants being the ultimate decider of what constitutes truth and their arbitrary censoring of media organisations.
The ramifications are disconcerting. Consider, for example, YouTube’s announcement in April last year that it would ban Covid-related content that directly contradicted WHO advice. Would that include disputing the organisation’s advice in January last year that Chinese authorities had “found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the virus?
Likewise, could one be banned for questioning WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s statement in February 2020 that countries should not “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade” in attempting to halt the spread of the virus? And let’s not forget that until Biden announced an inquiry into the origins of the virus, Facebook was removing content that claimed Covid-19 was man-made or manufactured.
Incidentally, Markson’s book What Really Happened in Wuhan is available for pre-order. As for what really happens in the thought processes of Wuhan Wendy and her ilk, I honestly have no idea.
The author is a writer for Sky News Australia. The views expressed here are his own
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