How often is a piece of news rendered unfit for United States citizen consumption and replaced with or rewritten to include propaganda?
A set of articles written by Joe McDonald about China's concerns with the current United States economic situation were replaced with one US-friendly article. Both articles were similar in content. One of them was found on USA Today and the other on the Washington Post; the titles were, respectively, China urges Washington to protect its investments and China tells US to get economy in order. The title of the US-Friendly article, which appeared the next morning on both USA Today and the Washington Post at the link of the original articles, was China's sinking currency causes tensions with U.S.
Both articles cite a statement made at the most recent Strategic Economic Dialogue by Vice Premier Wang Qishan; "We hope the U.S. side will take the necessary measures to stabilize the economy and financial markets, as well as to guarantee the safety of China's assets and investments in the United States." The original articles show that China is deeply concerned about keeping their economy on track, quote the governor of the Chinese central bank, who criticized the United States for the global economic situation and holds the US accountable because of its "excessive consumption and high leverage." While the original articles stated that Wang did not elaborate on his comments, Beijing reportedly owns $585 Billion in US Treasury debt.
The research department at RTR Radio discovered that links to the McDonald articles, book marked the night before, had been switched for a totally different one, written by David Lynch. The team found, upon further investigation, that while the links were still the same, the McDonald articles had, indeed, been replaced by the Lynch one, which claims that the Chinese yaun's value had peaked against the US Dollar and its descent was complicating relations between the United States and China. The tone of the Lynch article paints a totally different picture from the original McDonald pieces, even stating that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would "press Chinese officials for additional yuan gains," but instead found "Chinese officials more interested in lecturing than being lectured."
Was someone told to pull the McDonald articles because they exposed too much about China's thoughts on the global economic situation or revealed too much about the business dealings between the United States and China? One can only wonder what happened to journalistic integrity!
This is not the first time a story of importance has been mismanaged, however. New York Times writers Eric Lightblau and James Risen wrote an article about the governments illegal, warrantless wiretapping program before the 2004 Elections, but it is alleged that Bill Keller, Times executive editor, sat on the story. The New York Times finally published the article December 16, 2005. The reason for holding the story? Could it have been pressure from the government? The Times chose to post the article on their website after learning that the Bush administration might try to block its release.
Questions remain. How often does this kind of deception go on? How many times has it happened? Had I not experienced it first hand, I might not have believed it. Can we trust our mainstream media? My suggestion would be that when you find a piece of news that seems too controversial for the public, copy it, print it, take a screen shot of it, something" but don't let the mainstream media hide news from us! After all, how are we to make the right judgments if we don't have all the answers?
Endnotes:
China tells US to get economy in orderThis is the original link: (this link is no longer a functioning link) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120400189.html This is the actual article:
http://www.fox11az.com/news/topstories/stories/china-20081204-tells-us-get-economy-in-order.2ebdd402.html#
China urges Washington to protect its investments
Original link: (notice the link actually has the title of the original story it!)http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2008-12-04-china-urges-washington-to-protect-investments_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
This is the actual article: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1208/575005.html
China's sinking currency causes tensions with U.S.http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2008-12-04-china-urges-washington-to-protect-investments_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy