Remember when I talked about the China brand news? Well, the agencies are still at it, releasing any story that has a number and the word China in it - assuming the number is a casualty count. And sometimes this leads to poor reporting. Today's example is proudly brought to you by Yahoo! News:
"BEIJING – China's official Xinhua News Agency says 12 people have died after an elevator plunged at a construction site in east China.
Xinhua says the elevator fell Thursday morning on a housing construction site called "Sunshine City" in east Fujian province. Rescue efforts have been launched and local officials are investigating the incident.
No other details were available.
Workplace and industrial accidents are common in China, where safety measures have not always kept pace with rapid economic development."
And that's the entire newspost. It even goes to say "No other details were available." This wouldn't be too bad, but they will post no follow-up to the story. There's no backing to the last sentence and it doesn't really offer valuable background information either. This is what I would call bare minimum news. You write what, where and when and press post. It's not much different from Blogging, but more should be expected of news reporting. Perhaps it's reminecent of the time of minimal newspaper notes when you didn't have the pages available. But this is not a printed media.
Be careful with the China news, they underperform in many ways.
OP out.
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The agencies are still at it?.. I think they're going to be at it for a VERY long time. Until, in fact, China becomes a full democracy, frees Tibet, lets Taiwan go independent, increases human rights to western levels, allows Falung Gong freedom to do anything they want, increases freedom of the press, stops corruption 100% (which isn't done yet in ANY country), stops the global warming, stops producing crap for cheap price (high quality for cheap price accepted and preferred), bring back Elvis, abolish the one-child policy, stops product piracy, etc. The list goes on.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, China will be critized on all and every aspects of it until it proves itself for being good. Which only can be done by doing the impossible of achieving perfection in western standards, which none of the western countries meet.
I always say, the main export of West is double-standards.
China has a lot of crap, granted, but so does everyone else. It doesn't make it alright for China to be crap just because everyone else is, though, but it just sucks how China is used as a distraction.
Your concept of a China brand is excellent. I've been amusing myself on that topic for a long time but never came up with a single concept that packs it up so nicely.