CNN Apologizes to China

[Daveparts]

CNN Apologizes to China
By David Glenn Cox


But will CNN ever apologize to America? Facing pressure from the Chinese government and pressure, no doubt, from the state department, CNN management felt the need to cave in on their first amendment rights and the issue of journalistic integrity.

“CNN President Jim Walton has apologized for the insulting remarks made by CNN commentator Jack Cafferty on China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said here on Thursday. "On behalf of CNN I'd like to apologize to the Chinese people for that," said Walton in a letter to Chinese ambassador to the United States, Zhou Wenzhong. Walton also said, "CNN has the highest respect for Chinese people around the world and we have no doubt that there was genuine offense felt by them over the Jack Cafferty commentary.”

This is not really about Cafferty, it’s actually about Walton. What Cafferty said might have been inarticulate but it was still 100% correct!

"We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed," he said, "I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."

Anyone want to argue with Cafferty? These segments are done with Cafferty as a commentator and they are obviously only his opinion. In America you can have any opinion you like, no matter how vile or reprehensible, as long as you don’t offend the sponsor. Take Glenn Beck, also a CNN employee. I find many of his comments offensive and appalling but CNN won’t apologize to me. With my complaints they rub their hands in delight, as they see only ratings numbers. By complaining you actually help such vermin achieve status.

Every evening is Wolf Blizter ad nauseam, probably the worst interviewer on television today. No matter what the issue, Blitzer is going to bring up Israel. I don’t have a problem with talking about Israel but not every issue in the world today is about Israel and Blitzer's desire seems to be to supplant Alan Dershowitz as Israel’s leading apologist. Will CNN apologize to America’s Arab American and Palestinian communities? I think not. Who can forget Michael Moore’s dismantling of Blitzer? Has Moore been invited back on? So much for journalistic integrity!

Cafferty is the sidekick for CNN’s leading apologist and rabble-rouser, Lou Dobbs. Any attorney with a bad case always makes it his first order of business to change the subject. Dobbs rabble rouses about illegal immigration, which is a false argument entirely. It is false because it doesn’t exist! What we face in America are illegal refugees, populations driven from their homes by a collapsing Mexican economy. Do we call the people in Darfur immigrants?

Dobbs likes to focus on border issues, pointing his accusatory fingers at the sheriff's department in Two Cactus, Texas, or blaming border officials while ignoring the officials that make the mass refugee crisis a reality. He is blaming the Trojan horse while at the same time giving the Greeks a pass. Blaming the levees and ignoring the rain. He is sponsored by Boeing, who bring new jobs to the third world and out of America, and by Archer Daniel’s Midland, the agribusiness giant that has been a primary mover and shaker in the Free Trade movement. Leaving Mexican peasant farmers to compete at home with American agribusiness and falling farm prices.

But does Lou attack his sponsors, who do more to fuel the refugee crisis than the border patrol? Is that why Wal-Mart doesn’t advertise on his program? No, it’s easier to grandstand about border patrol agents who misbehaved during a shootout. Dobbs then gets on his high horse and pontificates that what they did was for a good reason! If I rob a bank to buy my Grandma a new car, will I escape prosecution, Lou? But it’s a good issue, play on the emotions, feel the outrage, and never talk about the real reasons at all.

Everything free trade has done to America it has done double to Mexico. But the media demagogue on China and ignore the situation in Mexico. Why? A few 'Free Tibet' banners are unfurled and monks get beat up and it’s an international media event. But 500,000 Mexicans protest and shut down Mexico City and it doesn’t even make page six below the fold. The validity of Mexican elections is seriously called into question but the American media and CNN portray the assistance of the Bush administration as guaranteeing the integrity of the elections. Thirty-five hundred Mexicans were killed in drug related killings last year and this year the number is moving toward doubling, Nine hundred alone right across the border from San Diego and what does CNN say? Nothing! I want my damn apology!

The Bush administration got the President that they wanted in Mexico. Meanwhile the Mexican economy is suffering, drug gangs have murdered the head of the National Police force, the police chief in Ciudad Juarez resigned to save his own life. Areas of Central Mexico are becoming depopulated by the lack of income. It’s not the people’s fault, Lou, it’s the government’s fault, the Mexican and American governments. Free trade has brought ruin and suffering to the majority of both populations. The Bush administration’s answer to the Mexican drug problem is plan- Columbia redux: attack helicopters, heavy weapons and more repression. Lou’s answer is a chain link fence.

But Lou would rather talk about refugees polluting our deserts on a death march than American corporations who make billions by exporting jobs and hopscotching the globe for the lowliest and most downtrodden workers. Lou plays along with the game by calling them immigrants, but they are refugees or aliens, not immigrants. By definition you must have permission to immigrate. Lou loses that point in the midst of name-calling and finger-pointing, but he is careful never to point it at the rich and powerful corporations.

He might lose his sponsorship. Or even worse, management might have to apologize to a brutal dictatorship, and you know the one. The one where "We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart."

So freedom of the press no longer extends to the networks of corporate importers, they’ll sick their bully boys on you if you say, "I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." I think that now CNN owes America an apology, for all their lies and half-truths, mis-statements and corporate agendas, the Glenn Becks, Wolf Blitzers and Lou Dobbs who are left free to spin and weave while they apologize for someone who mis-spoke by accidentally telling the truth.

I want my apology, damn it!

[Phred42]

1. CNN is not afraid of Americans - no appology needed

[tom_paine]

2. Who the hell would be afraid of the Imperial Subjects of Amerika?

A more confused, broken, tired, harried, hurried, cowardly, and apathetic people have not been seen on this planet since 1930s Germany.

We ARE the 1930s Germans, and they are us, plain and simple.

We have no power because we have deserved none. That Bushler stole our Republic and killed it probably means that it was a long time before that the the "plum was ripe for picking".

We are NOT the Ameicans of the 1930s, we are the Germans.

Ironically, the Italians of the 30s are looking to reprise the same role for Amerika as they did for Germany back then.

[depakid]

3. "confused, broken, tired, harried, hurried, cowardly, and apathetic"

and we ain't seen nothin yet....

Less than 4% of the world's population believe that they're entitled to use/waste more than 24% of the world's energy resources!

All on borrowed money!

Spurred on by the likes of CNN.