As several lectures has referred to the comparison between Chinese media and American media, I find that many American people, at least the professors, are holding some misunderstandings about Chinese media and Chinese public attitude towards press freedom. Many of them may keep the incorrect image that Chinese media are still totally under the control of the government, or by the communist party and the public are living in the feint and with no access to the outside world. But personally, I regard these ideas as the American “pride and prejudice”. As a matter of fact, though it is true that there exists some kind of restricts of Chinese media, these restricts are far from fooling all the Chinese public because the Chinese government got to realize the truth long time ago that “you can fool some people all the time; you can fool all the people some time; but you can never fool all the people all the time.” Besides, there’s no media can completely get rid of restricts and attain the “pure freedom”, anyway.
In addition, it is true that there is some news we can find on the medias of other countries while remain blank on Chinese mainstream medias, it does not mean that people staying in China will surely miss the information that people in the US can easily get. Since everyone in China know the truth that the majority of our medias are controlled by our government, we actually turn to the internet for complement, if not the first choice.
What’s more, there’s one thing I should raise up that what the medias in the US say are not always the truth. Since almost all the medias in the US are run in as kind of business, it can easily conclude that the main purpose of the media is to catch your eye and make as much money as possible. Chances are that in order to make the news more attractive, they have to make the stories sound more shocking. That’s why when I turn on the TV in my room in GRC, there’re so many bad news flood. Still, some medias maybe hold a prejudice on China and when they choose the materials, they often tend to use only some sides of the truth they are familiar or identified with.
So how can we simply claim that we should trust the US medias more than the Chinese ones? Actually, there’s still a lot remain for us to discuss.