Always bad never good about china , why?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19875389

Western media is bad about everything. China is not special in that regard.

I think news reports, especially of foreign countries, tend to be sensationalist and focus on bad news. They will produce good news too if it is very exciting indeed.

Which, funnily enough, is how Xinhua and 人民日报 work too...

BBC 'News' is a terrible news source, and also has a strong anti-China bias (I won't read that article, I block crap like BBC News and the Daily Mail using my hosts file).

Other, more credible British and North American news sources tend to show a similar bias though. My guess is that it is what the audience wants- "oh look in China they all eat any animals on a stick"

The reason that article is bad is because I don't think there's any possible way to make China look good in regards to this situation.

China is the main competition in regards to world power. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" applies as well. It's mostly politics.

Nah. As 张飞 said, Western media is bad to everything. You should see what German media says about German politics.

Mo Tian, take a look at the international section of 新华 at the moment: http://www.xinhuanet.com/

It's got pictures poking fun at Africans and Indians, several complaints about Japanese including one saying that the islands are part of an American plot to undermine Japanese-Chinese relations, an article on how Western countries don't have free speech, a piece on how India is training 500,000 cyberwarriors, and an opinion piece saying that China's economy is a powerful weapon.

It's not a model of tolerance and promotion of global understanding.

As SpokeLee on the face of it the Liu Xiaobo case doesn't reflect that well on China. I guess you could argue in a country of 1.x billion people it's unfair to focus on just this one case, but it is high profile.

As for the BBC providing stories on par with the Daily Mail, nothing of substance, and having too much bias, this takes it too far. I would agree that some of the reporting does just scrape the surface of issues, although it's getting better over time. But generally for a quick overview you can get a feel for the issues.

E.g. these two articles are fairly in depth, although not too positive:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19953634
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19797989

These two are fairly neutral, maybe even good?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19958011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19961878

And recently there's been a series of longer pieces that might have some value on Chinese historical figures:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19962432

Again they point out bad as well as good, but hardly overwhelming bias.

So yes, there are plenty of negative, weakly researched articles on BBC, but you can probably learn something from it; but corresponding Chinese media also has its own bias. Maybe you can try to find some positive news stories about China in the Western media, I'm sure you'll be able to. They are out there...

I saw a speech given by a Chinese ambassador. He replied to a question from the audience regarding the bias of the media, saying you can't get a good picture of China from either the Chinese or the Western media, the only way is to be on the ground in the country.

I'm a bit surprised at Alan's complete dismissal of the entire output of the BBC (or is it just news output?), and would be interested to know his preferred outlets.

It can best be explained by the propaganda model IMO:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

Using this model will explain why Western media for the most part are happy to criticize China or Iran but rarely Israel or one's own elite, mostly for reasons of power. Of course this happens in every country to some extent but is most developed in the West because elites have to manipulate opinion there since they can't simply lock dissidents up like in less free countries (as pointed out by Hume about 2 hundred years ago). It's like when you were at school. Everyone was happy to say nasty things about the weak 'nerds' but who was going to say that the school bully had BO?

The idea that Western media is "bad to everything" is patently false and in fact serves elite opinion since it suggests a rather limited spectrum of opinion is in fact giving a broad range when in reality it is very skewed to the right of public opinion. Just one quick example. Recently there was a story about the fact that the Queen of England tried to have one of her own citizens extradited to another country. Since she is supposed to be non-political and in principle support all of her citizens this story shows the patent lack of democracy that exists in the U.K. 'on the ground'. The fact that this story was quickly hushed up and went down the memory hole goes to show how well disciplined intellectuals are there, not to mention the fact that if this had happened in Iran it would have been no doubt given much more coverage and been further evidence of Iran's lack of democracy. If this story had taken place in a real democracy there would have been people on the streets in protest, the fact that it was quickly forgotten speaks volumes...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/sep/25/bbc-apologises-queen-abu-hamza1

This doesn't mean, as some people have suggested, that we should give up on media. What it means is that one has to develop a critical approach to assessing it and try to sort the good from the bad (even the Daily Mail occasionally has a good article).

The Queen of England! That's what my students used to call her.
Aside from the larger argument as to why such a thing as a free press is even possible, why does the Queen's secret remark on Abu Hamza prove that we don't have democracy? I mean, do you think his extradition was done because she wanted it?
And in what way do Chinese or Irani media report more honestly because it's easier for them to lock dissidents up?

1. "why does the Queen's secret remark on Abu Hamza prove that we don't have democracy? I mean, do you think his extradition was done because she wanted it? "

I don’t think it proves we don’t have a democracy, I said we don’t have a real democracy, which I think is true. If democracy means that the government is in some way representative of the people and its will then we have a kind of democracy, but one that is deeply flawed for basic reasons that this article highlights.

What it shows is that: a) elites can easily influence government policy if they need to, at least much easier than the public can (public opinion can easily be ignored once the government is in office, just look at Trident for example). The Queen meets ministers all the time (off the record of course), how much do the public actually know about what goes on here? b) The Q of E is supposed to be above politics, she is supposed to care about all of her citizens no matter how awful they are, at least in principle I assume. Hard to believe that if Hamza was part of her inner-circle the same thing would have happened to him. C) the fact that this story was ignored or hushed up shows the way the media really operate, they have given up real reporting for the most part since it’s too inconvenient. Much better to bash the bad guys than actually highlight problems in one’s own society. D)the fact that the BBC even apologized to the Queen just shows what a joke that institution can be. That was real reporting, something the public had a right to know because it gives a glimpse of how the country is really run. Remember this story wasn’t meant to come out and this was just a tiny glimpse of what really goes on in politics. E) Why didn’t people care about it? A point we can leave for later…

At the risk of this being just about the U.K. I should add that it happens pretty much everywhere as far as I can tell. I guess I didn’t explain it that well, but if you want to understand the reason then read about the Propaganda Model which explains it much better than I can.



2. "And in what way do Chinese or Irani [sic] media report more honestly because it's easier for them to lock dissidents up?"

My point isn’t that the Chinese media is more honest, it’s that since people in a democratic society can’t be locked up for holding beliefs that go against the grain other means have to be used, namely thought control, which can be explained with the Propaganda Model (see post above).

Well, fair enough in part. But the Hamza thing was a complete mess anyway. It isn't very surprising that someone might wonder why he hadn't gone yet - not to support the Queen, though. I get very angry about Prince Charles, but possibly the only difference from the Queen, apart from her greater power, is her greater tact (usually).
It wasn't just the Guardian that reported on this, but at the same time I can't imagine how the media could sit in on her conferences with the PM. I don't know about her meeting ministers all the time.
But this is a partial digression so I will leave it all open and get back to my work.

While I agree with your main point, Antimacassar, I don't really think you've chosen a good example to prove it.

The queen should protect her citizens, ok. But should she protect her citizens who have committed crime from justice? No. Is she above the law? No. Can she override the decision of the judges? No. (not in practise anyway)

I also think its pretty well known that she meets with politicians. I don't believe there is any attempt to hide it, Cameron himself said that he meets her once a week.

I don't see how this shows that we do not live in a "real" democracy (even though I agree that we do not - particularly with regards to the news that we get).

EDIT:
I think an excellent example (again for the UK) is the referendum on staying in the EU. Many people want such a referendum to take place, but the government don't because they know that there is a good chance that the people will vote 'no', which they perceive as not being good for the country. Whether or not its good for the country, I'd say that this a pretty blatant neglection of "democracy".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20103483

"Rural life 'never better'" in China according to BBC...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20178655

"The world is increasingly being shaped by China, and if it has looked west for the last two centuries, in future it will look east.

"Welcome, then, to the new Chinese paradigm - one that combines a highly competitive, indeed often ferocious market, with a ubiquitous and competent state."

BBC is not exactly being "bad to China" here.

Still interested to hear the preferred media sources for the people in this thread who think the BBC is crap.

@ximeng I was specifically dismissing the BBC's news website, their day to day news coverage is quite superficial although some of the opinion pieces you linked to seemed interesting.

BBC News TV programs used to be decent a few years ago when I last watched them regularly, although it seems that the whole corporation has had a disastrous month or two with both covering up and making up abuse stories.

If you don't mind (or perhaps prefer) a British slant on the news you could try The Guardian. They are not perfect either but the quality of the writers tends to be higher than most news outlets.