WHCHEN

I don’t understand how this guy (See Who’s James Reynolds? No more than a BBC journalist or not??) still can work for BBC. The conclusion is his report reflected BBC’s agenda and propoganda. James, I suggest you should have a week trial – working for CCTV. Let’s make an exchange program – invite James Reynold to report ‘British Empire’ invaded Iraq.

Following quoted from http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jamesreynolds  

At 8:35 pm on 30 Apr 2008, netkeeper718 wrote:

Kishore Mahbubani was correct in BBC “hard talk”: the world is changing but the Western haven’t learnt how to listen.The first impression of any Chinese people to your blog will be disappointing as you again tried to connect “China” to “Communists” to which you didn’t say but still implying “evil”. If you the blog is mainly for entertaining white racists, there is nothing I can say. But if it is not, you are again prototyping China to your audience. Why can’t you wakeup and look at the millions people around you in Beijing, they are not rich, they are well educated and they work hard to make a change to the life as well as their country. Regarding all the show around the torch relay, A few things BBC fail to motion in the program even knows it is true.

First, back to 1950s, the reason so called “Chinese invasion to Tibet” was to give hundreds of thousand of poor Tibetans the basic human rights. They were treated as slaves under Dalai Lama’s regime.

Second, most of the pro-Chinese protester in San Francisco, Sydney and Japan will not be there if the pro-Tibet protester was peaceful as Dalai Lama told the Western media. The American/Australian/Japanese-Chinese tried hard to be part of the local community and they would be happier to watch TV at home rather than go on street waving flags. (No question BBC will say as per some unnamed person, the Chinese Embassy is behind all these). Give me a break; I would never go to the Embassy unless I need to change my passport. The Embassy would never know I lived here unless I was a wanted criminal in the list.

Third, yesterday a Tibetan policeman (the majority of local authority employee in Tibet are Tibetans, so it is normal the policemen is a Tibetan) was shot dead by the mob. His funeral was hold today. You know what, in a French media, the story become the Chinese Government admit opened fire and shot Tibetans. What can I say!!! 

I have watched your program for quite a while. To be honest, it is very hard to say your reports are objective without bias. I can not expect you to change in a day. All I can expect from you is to realize there are millions of audiences are connected with one country or other, you better not to humiliate their country on a regular basis by selectively show stories or even making up stories. The audiences are far smarter and they know both sides of the story. You personal credit will be damaged if you do so.Since you are staying in China now, when you are enjoying a half-dollar nice-cold beer with fantastic food in a restaurant or superb services from humble local driver, please slow down for one second and ask yourself how their feeling about your report are; are you showing any appreciation to them in your work.28.

At 9:06 pm on 30 Apr 2008, royalskepticism wrote:
He also falsely reported on Chinese state media’s reaction on the Olympic torch rely. It was first broadcasted on Sunday 6 April at 1900 BST. At the time he claims that no Chinese media had reported pro-Tibetan protests. He suggests that the Chinese state media tried to keep the news of the protests from the Chinese public. BBC “apologised” for the mistake in the Editor’s blog (which I had to use the website search engine to locate the page) and in an edition of In the News on an early Saturday morning (who watches News on early Saturday mornings?). He barely got a slap on his wrist and kept reporting and now has his own blog. Why are we, the licence fee payers paying thousands of pounds for a biased reporter to go to China and all he came up with are news bashing China and humiliating the people of China. Surely the Chinese has their problems, but who are we to judge them. The worst is none of the western media can produce a fair and balanced view on China. Same with the Tibet history page here on the BBC. It fails to mention the Dalai lama was a dictator when he was in power. It fail to mention during the British “expedition” Colonel Younghusband killed thousands of Tibetans. It also failed to mention what the Chinese had done to improve Tibet and abolition of slavery in

14. At 7:27 pm on 30 Apr 2008, Lightsoutbritain wrote:

James, no disrespect, you are obviously enjoying the life in China, but still holding a very biased tone of voice to please the main-stream western taste.

China is China, not communist China! Let’s make it clear! Do you ever call the UK Capitalist Britain?!!

I have grown up in China until I came to the UK when I was 20, and I found the UK is far more ‘socialist’ than China. And there are certainly a lot of governmental dictatorship as well as propaganda in the west.

I appreciate your point of view, but by referring China every time as “Communist China”, you are too biased and ignorant.

I’d love to have a real ideal communist country as Karl Marx has envisioned a century ago down in the British Library, but the fact is, China is no different than any other western countries in terms of social structure, economy and so on, it is just part of the “globalisation”.

So, please respect this 7000 years old civilization and call China just China!

Thanks! 

31. At 9:10 pm on 30 Apr 2008, simply111 wrote:

The Chinese do take the Olympic Games very seriously, but it is because it is a way to attract more people (especially those who think of China negatively) to come to China and see today’s China by their own eyes. I am very disappointed to see that there are very few news that protrait China positively.
To me, the Olympic Games is an international sport event, I don’t know since when it has become a political device. And since when trying to steal the torch has become a heroic act? I really think that it sets a very bad example. If the pro-tibetans are allowed to do this to the torch and not getting blamed, next time the terrorists could disrupt any event using violence and say, hey, it is allowed. Don’t get me wrong, it is alright for the pro-tibetans to voice their opinion, but it should be in a peaceful way.
Moreover, I am quite puzzle by one comment I saw above saying that Chinese are using their large population advantage to suppress the pro-tibetan. I wonder, if the pro-tibetan have the right to voice their opinions of being independent, shouldn’t the rest of the Chinese (Tibetan born in Tibet) have the same right to annouce their objections?
By the way, I have been toTibet recently, I saw through my own eyes that the tibetans are happy and content of their way of living(certainly not all, but most of them), and the tibetan heritage are well preseved. You don’t have to believe me, you can always check it out yourself.

56. At 1:23 pm on 01 May 2008, canberraman wrote:

To nonfamiliar:

two comments:

1. Your observation that “the concept of public debate and scrutiny of news issues is utterly foreign to a population reared on a state media diet” used to be correct untill recent years. If as you claimed you visit Chinese media sites regularly you would notice the change—the incidence of “Chinese tiger photos” is just one example.

2. Even if your claim were correct, Western media has no right (and it is immoral) to spin the “facts”. Unfortunately, this is the common practice of western media when they report internationally under the assumtion that the ones they humiliate and denounce do not have the microphone to tell the truth (they do not dare to do that domestically and probably that is why you trust it so much). Just a couple of examples, “Mass-destruction weapons in Iraq”; “massacre” by Serbs (and not the other way around); …
The “truths” are finally “found out” later? Alas, after tens of thousands of people have been killed?

Too bad, this time, they forgot there are too many Chinese observing in Western countries as well and are caught red-handed…

57. At 3:39 pm on 01 May 2008, sirFranzzz wrote:

James Reynolds wrote: “At the time, the Chinese government blocked access to this website – it had done so for years, for reasons that were never entirely explained.”
Reynolds, you must be pretty thick if you have not understood why the BBC has been blocked. I shall have to tell then. It is because the BBC is the most biased broadcaster in the world. How do I know? I have been listening to the BBC, especially World Service, for at least 50 years and I have not heard or seen bias and prejudice any where else. For at least TWO decades, World Service broadcast everything and anything on Tibet that they could find and almost all of it from Robbie Barnet of Tibet Information Network, one of the Tibetan apologists in the West. One broadcast was that “tibetan boys left footprints in the ROCKS”, which is something Jesus Christ never managed to do. As for BBC TV, it has always stereotyped the Chinese whilst boasting of its “pride in diversity”. I know the BBC for at least twice as long as Reynolds and I used to listen all night everynight and I know the BBC has at least a touch of racism, at least. Will the BBC have the courage to publish this?

60. At 4:33 pm on 01 May 2008, ravenblk wrote:

To be honest, you’ve told the some of the truth with a bit of personal feelings inside, I understand and I appreciate that. Afterall this is a blog where you are allowed to express your opinion as a person.

The news reports which you made on BBC weeks ago about the whole Olympics/Torch realy, however, were not so acceptable. The reasons being:

1) As a jourlist/reporter, you should ALWAYS report news/events WITHOUT your personal attitude/feelings. Your job is to present the WHOLE thing, including the up and downsides in front of the audience and leave the judgements to their OWN. NOT to influence them by willfully CHOOSE what to report.

Hence BBC/CNN/F2 had lost their ground as “media”, especially “FAIR media” as they marked themselves to be, in reporting only the downsides of the torch-relay and 3/14 Tibet riot and none of the upsides (the situation changed later after so many chinese called and complained BBC about their biased report on 4/19 London torch relay, it was until then we started to see footage of supportors and the violent movements of some pro-Tibet protests).

2)As someone has said previously – China is a big country that’s still recovering from wars/culture revolution, it’s still developing, and developments TAKE TIME! The change can’t be done in one day or year so STOP juding China by westernized oppinions. Do you have millions of poverty people to feed? Do you have 1.4 billion people to take care of?

China is changing, you have to admitted it, despite with a disdained tone. There’re tonnes of mistakes and wrong things that the government has done, and still doing. But China is changing. The Chinese people are eager for freedom of speech and HR more than you think, BUT we know that it’s not for YOU to bring the HR and democracy to us, it’s for us to GAIN it. The results started to show, some regions are more democrated than others, and we DO curse/comment on the faults of government online/everyday life and sometimes even on CCTV.

Our culture is so different from western culture, we are very fond of nationalism, it’s in our blood and it’s nothing to do with CCP or the government. All BBC/CNN/F2 etc. are doing now is to TAKE AWAY the better days of democracy in China and tighten the grips of government on Chinese people EVEN MORE.

IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE?

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING?

64. At 7:37 pm on 01 May 2008, fairreport wrote:

Hi James,

I think you should consider handing over your notice to your line manager in BBC, who sent you to such a “terrible” place that you hate it entirely, I feel sorry for you …

It doesn’t matter how much you hate China and Chinese, we are destined to be stronger and stronger, we will disppoint you, I feel sorry for you again …

Come back London, I will buy you a few beers in a nice pub, for your suffering days in China – binge drinking is the only enjoyable thing for most British anyway…

I feel sorry for you , oh yes, really …

69. At 01:09 am on 02 May 2008, yigetc wrote:

Hi James, maybe you know that already, you are very ‘famous’ now in China for your ‘excellent’ reports. I am very surprised to see that you are still there. Can you please first have some shame to apologize what you said on 6th of April about the torch relay disruption, which you predicted will not be shown on Chinese media? I can understand that as you have been in China for “only” two years, it is not easy for you to know too much about China yet. Maybe, I will forgive you. But if you keep doing stuff like this, I can only say that the god is watching, and you know the concequence.

“What China had in mind was a kind of lap of honour – legions of cheerful fans across the world cheering the torch along its way.”

Very interesting, I strongly recommend you to read an acient Chinese book, “the art of war”. Hope this can help you give some thoughtful comments.

Btw, have read two posts from you, it seems like you are the bravest Brit struggling to survive in China. To be honest, it just makes me laugh… What is wrong with the BBC’s HR?

75. At 04:58 am on 02 May 2008, avidnewsreader wrote:

Since about two years ago, I’ve always had access to BBC (and CNN and NYTimes) in China. I was surprised because living in the US as a Chinese American, I didn’t doubt BBC its claim that it’s blocked in China. I later emailed BBC about this, thinking they would correct their article to “BBC blocked in parts of China”. But instead, I received a response basically saying that I probably just got lucky.

I was disappointed, and I could no longer completely trust BBC’s reportings after that. Now, with more biased reporting on Tibet, I’m convinced that some reporters such as James Reynolds simply doesn’t like China or the Chinese people. Look at the first two paragraphs of this article. It’s got a really hostile tone, and that’s just completely unnecessary.

James, I hope you get relocated to cover another country, because you don’t sound like you are enjoying yourself in China at all. There are a lot of good things happening in China, and this you can ask any Westerner who’s been in China for some time. But instead you only focus on the negatives, the bad things in China, and I’m saddened by this. I see problems with America too, like Iraq, etc, but I also see what makes America one of the greatest nations. The Western media only sees/reports the bad side of China, and this is unfortunate.