The dismissal of Dieter Klaus Hennig from the senior editor position with SID (Der Sport-Information-Dienst), a German sports news agency, in early August has given rise to widespread concern of German media, and most of the German local media deem that Hennig has been ousted for his prolonged pro-China stance.
Is sports editor Dieter Klaus Hennig really imbued with an apparent "pro-China stance"? His boss or ex-employer, Michael Cremer, supervisor and president of the SID, has given a clear, explicit answer. Cremer said he insisted that his SID reporters need to keep certain distance from Beijing and should be beyond the hoopla and type of the Games with an implication that Hennig's reports were not "clean". In other words, Hennig should have made his stories dirtier or "filthier" with his reports of China's sports events. This has obviously posed the out-and-out double standards for the press media.
As a matter of fact, shortly after the incident relating to Dieter Klaus Hennig occurred, some media organs doubted and even questioned the so-called press freedom of the SID. The core point is that if there was a full freedom of the press, it did not matter at all whether Dieter Klaus Hennig had taken a "pro-China stance". Moreover, his reportage is well-grounded, and "neat and tidy".
In another development, Berliner Zeitung, a German daily newspaper, reported on August 22 that Zhang Danhong, the deputy director of Deutsche Welle's Chinese department, was suspended from duty also because of her "pro-China" position.
In response to a journalist's question on the suspension of her post at International broadcaster Deutsche Welle due to her remarks showing friendliness toward China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Thursday that he knew (pretty well) of Zhang's previous reports. "The media should adhere to the principle of objectivity and justice when covering news," the spokesman underscored.
It is known to all that there has never been absolute freedom whatsover in the world, and the so-called press freedom cannot avert its attribute either. In the view of some Western media, however, the relativity of press freedom is manifested especially in the east, and they are particularly biased against China, a "Giant dragon of the east". the nation today is entirely different from its past. The Western world, which had overlooked the orient for about 100 years, has begun feeling both uneasy and reluctant to sit together with China as equals and is unwilling to see it play an ever greater role in the international arena.
In such circumstances, some Western media have started to deceive themselves as well as others. So they are reluctant to accept reality on one hand and, on the other hand, they are would rather prefer not to let the public know China's reality. In a nutshell, they have been obsessed with a drastic shift from an excessive self-confidence to no confidence in themselves.
A typical and most representative aspect of the shift from the excessive self-confidence to no confidence in the Western world shown by some media is the very assumption that the rise of China has menaced their age-old global outlook on the value effect and they do not like to see any other value concept to emerge globally. Some Western media do not like to get their audience informed on a true or genuine China precisely because they have regarded the all-inclusive Chinese elements and a new mode for China's national development as a "great scourge", and so they attempt to keep off the great might of China's value concept. This wishful thinking, nevertheless, has laid bare their dread fear at heart.
By People's Daily Online
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