Letters and Blogs

Cooperation good for mainland, Taiwan

Comment on "Mainland envoy Chen Yunlin reaches Taiwan today" (China Daily website, Nov 3)

The Chinese mainland and Taiwan have a lot common interests. Divided, we both lose.

In a global, bigger picture, we both benefit if we can somehow work together. This is not about democracy.

Jim

on China Daily website

All journalists should respect truth

Comment on Victor Paul Borg's column "Analyze China on its own terms and merits" (China Daily, Oct 31)

The author has posed a very good question: "Now that the Olympic-era provisions for foreign journalists allowing unfettered interviews and movements have been indefinitely extended, will foreign journalists report about China more objectively?"

I think no one knows if, in the near future, foreign journalists will be fair in their reports about China.

The author himself does not believe in the possibility of objectivity in general.

However, when speaking of journalism, objectivity is a very easy thing to get. Journalism is not like natural or social sciences, whose results require - to be proved true - a lot of time and efforts by generations of thinkers, and complex experiments.

But a journalist is not a scientist, she/he must be "objective" in a different way.

The author of the article has chosen an excellent example to illustrate his point of view, when criticizing the Dalai Lama's ban on the worship of a deity called Dorje Shugden. He compares the hypocrisy displayed by the Dalai Lama in stifling a section of Tibetan Buddhists with the superficiality of the comments of the Western media in reporting the riots last March.

What I know for sure is that, before the Olympics, people enthusiastic of the Dalai Lama attacked public facilities in Lhasa, burned schools and shops, killed Tibetans and other ethnic Chinese citizens who were working peacefully, in a campaign aimed at boycotting the Beijing Olympics. And none of those criminals was killed by the army or the police in Lhasa.

Is that not objective enough? Is that not sufficiently proved?

If not, foreign journalists now have the duty, and the possibility, to investigate.

Journalists must thoroughly check the sources of the facts about happenings in any societies, when writing their stories. It is impossible to be present in person everywhere, and check everything firsthand. But nowadays it is possible to know if, and how, an incident or event happened - with the greatest approximation. It's just a matter of hours, or days. Journalists, like lawyers, are duty-bound to compete with each other to exhibit their verifiable evidence and try to inform the public.

Claudio Cervini

via e-mail

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(China Daily 11/04/2008 page9)