Anti-CNN.com, A Chinese Website Against Western Media's Biased Reports

Anti-Cnn.com is a website recently constructed by Rao Jin, 24, the founder of a small technology company in Beijing to expose the western media's biased reports on recent March 14 Lhasa Riots in China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

This website is established to expose the lies and distorted facts in the western media. The site is maintained by the individual volunteers, who are not associated with the businesses or government officials.

We are not against the western media, but against the lies and fabricated stories in the media.

We are not against the western people, but against the prejudice from the western society.

As some German news outlets (their Chancellor Merkel Anelga has already decided not to attend Beijing Olympics) may be more prejudiced than CNN, the American cable news network apparently is the scapegoat. But CNN still didn't learn the lesson! It insisted (read below how a Chinese defied the claim) it has fairly reported on the issue, but the latest picture on its Lhasa Riots' photo gallery is still problematic.

STATEMENT on "CNN statement on Tibet coverage"

It is glad to know that CNN has realized the tremendously negative publicity it had earned itself over the Internet recently, and it has abandoned its usual "keep silent" way of dealing with credibility charges by putting out a statement clearing itself on its Tibet coverage, which had been criticized for distorting facts and taking side by many bloggers and news agencies all over the world. The pressure must have been huge that CNN the experienced defendant against credibility accusations (number speaks, googling "CNN lies" returns 653,000 results, more than double of the 305,000 results for "Spitzer prostitution", the hottest news this year) has to respond.

As witnesses of the false reports from CNN, we recognize the effort CNN makes to polish its tainted image, however, we can only find the statement in its whole an evasive and vague piece trying only to make excuses. We feel pity for CNN again acting in such a dishonest and unapologetic way.

Taking a quick look at what CNN has to say, one will find CNN's excuse for cropping picture laughable. Web based publication has great deal of freedom in presenting multimedia materials including pictures. CNN could have posted the picture in its entirety while moving text to the rest of the area without any trouble at all. Web pages are not printed materials, resizing and reframing paragraphs are virtually costless and effortless. In fact, after being attacked for cropping the picture, CNN modified the page to put a zoomed out version of the entire original photo, without having to move text format at all. Then why did CNN need to crop it in the first place? Also, CNN argues in the statement that the picture was captioned "Tibetans throw stones", then by what motive would a rational editor crop out the exact part of people throwing stones? No excuse can possibly be found to justify the discrepancy between what CNN did and what CNN claims.

Besides, CNN's factual mistakes are not limited to the picture or calling Tibet as a country. During its TV airing until as late as March 25th, when multiple sources had confirmed Tibet riot violent and deadly, CNN anchors repeated called Tibetan turbulence a "peaceful protest". It was exceptionally misleading and was a major distortion of fact. Even after www.anti-CNN.com had published the mistakes of CNN and other news outlets, Lou Dobbs of CNN continued to use the same wrong descriptions in his TV program. Even an whole team of unprofessional reporters and editors would not be a strong excuse to make up for this.

CNN Lhasa Riots report picture (cropped, see below original ones). Caption reads : Demonstrations against Chinese rule turned violent on March 14 as Tibetan protesters clashed with police and ethnic Chinese. Fottage from China's state television shows armed soldiers on the streets of Lhasa.

CNN also repetitively refused to identify the dead as victims of the riot, and in their carefully calculated lines constantly implied that they were protesters left dead by government actions, while in fact, they were murdered by those CNN-called "peaceful protesters".

Original news footage is reporting [People's Armed Force] were rescuing three Japanese tourists.

Observing all these facts, no one could be convinced that CNN's distortions and erroneous messages were simply editorial or technical mistakes. They are consistent and still on-going, in favor of one side of the story.

In addition, CNN has in its reports repetitively excluded Tibetan ethnics from the Chinese. This is unacceptable, or in the American term, politically incorrect. It is just similar to calling African American and Caucasian American as Blacks and American.

While the German news agency RTL had quickly acknowledged and apologized for its mistake after www.anti-cnn.com pointed it out, professionals in journalism at CNN still refuse to acknowledge mistakes to redeem trust. We have to say, the denial issued by CNN on March 28th was just a weak and pathetic attempt to weasle away from the systematic lying campaign CNN had conducted in the past weeks.

By FridayInLove Anti-cnn.com