The Wall Street Journal published Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda on Wednesday and there’s nobody happier than the CCP themselves. Moreover, the Journal appears to be fine with it, according to a new statement given to the National Pulse.
“We have run numerous editorials and op-eds highly critical of China’s handling of the coronavirus, its deception, and manipulation of the World Health Organization,” said the paper’s editorial page editor Paul Gigot when asked for comment.
“We’ve also recently criticized China’s military moves in the South China Sea, its crackdown in Hong Kong, and its theft of intellectual property, among other offenses against global norms.
“I thought our readers, who are too busy to be able to read the Chinese media, deserved to hear unfiltered what the Chinese are saying. Our readers are smart enough to sort the truth from the propaganda.”
That’s an overt admission by the Journal of publishing CCP propaganda, ostensibly as a means by which to “balance” their critiques. That’s not how this works.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party is so excited about their disinformation victory that they’ve taken a victory lap via Chinese state media itself.
The gloating in CGTN took the following form overnight:
Xie criticized those even trying to make a fortune out of the pandemic, saying that they have demanded reparations from China, a chilling reminder of the Boxer Indemnity foreign powers coerced China into paying more than a century ago.
Yes, that’s the Wall Street Journal laying up a slam dunk for China to attack those who believe China owes the world reparations for the COVID-19 virus.
Congressmen, Senators, and even the President of the United States have suggested as much.
You almost have to admire the savvy behind the CCP’s information tyranny.
Hong Kong’s brutal oppressor—Xie Feng—writes an op-ed in one of the most well regarded newspaper’s in America, where he fabricates some nonsense about “everyone being in the fight together”. Then, because of Feng’s position, the CCP’s media apparatus treats the article as a news hook to pump the exact same message again.
Discussing the original placement of the piece on the War Room: Pandemic podcast on Wednesday, co-host Raheem Kassam predicted the CCP would “be poppin’ bottles” i.e. celebrating over the matter.
Articles in CGTN and Xinhua News prove his prediction correct.
Yesterday on @WarRoomPandemic I warned the Chinese Communist Party would be taking a victory lap over placing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
Today, they did.
See my next tweet… pic.twitter.com/HlhX5g8yn4
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) May 14, 2020
In running the op-ed at all, the Journal lent its 130-year-old gravitas to Feng’s words.
If Feng published his bloviating nonsense in some media outlet that the CCP owns, it would’ve been dismissed, even unseen. It would’ve blunted the debilitating effects of the disinformation.
Instead, China gets to pretend that the Wall Street Journal—a primarily American outlet—is functioning as some form of conduit for a joint international effort by China and America to fight the virus together.
If China was going to join the fight with America, why would they use the World Health Organization as their patsy in convincing the entire globe that such a fight doesn’t exist?
China will keep making stuff up, and American media institutions have a responsibility to reject it, debunk it, or caveat it. Something the Wall Street Journal incredibly failed to do.
