Editor's Note 28: On Protests

I really don't want to write this Editor's Note. The entire protest has me in a tizzy and I am not even sure what a tizzy is.

Many people are protesting the Western media's portrayal of China, especially nearing the 2008 Olympic Games. I can agree that the media has been overly critical of China and sympathetic to Tibetan separatists.

However, that rational argument of peace and unity during the games is obscured by the seemingly nationalist approach to the counter-protest.

Screaming chants of "Liars" and trying to cover the Tibetan supporters with giant Chinese flags is an infantile form of protest. Furthermore, the more peace-oriented side of the counter-protestors should have renounced and pushed out the ridiculous propaganda that some students were handing out.

The argument about Tibetan independence is much larger than the Dalai Lama, so attacking him with fliers about his tenuous connections to sketchy individuals obfuscates the real debate. Propaganda (from both sides) really degenerates the debate into nothing more than a competition of hyperbole.

Furthermore, acts of solidarity, such as singing the Chinese national anthem and ominous-sounding slogans like "One World. One Dream. One China," make it hard to separate an anti-biased media, pro-unity argument from a pro-communist, pro-blind patriotism argument-especially to non-Chinese outsiders.

However, we in the media (maybe less so recess) can recognize and admit our anti-China bias that stems from our Cold War reporting on Russia and Cuba and work more to truly living up to journalistic neutrality. We got to take China's good (economic freedom and progress) and China's bad (massive murders and human rights violations) and then we'll have the facts of life.