Media is not being honest with us — — An analysis of the recent Hong Kong protest based on media bias
Recently, the protests to protect protecting Hong Kong as a part of China in many cities around the world have been reported distinguishingly according to the media’s political attitude. For example, the Chinese mainland students and Chinese Hong Kong students at the University of Queensland as an example, who have been separated into two groups opposing each other’s political beliefs and clashinged on the campus. But why has this protest happened?
Media Bias and Political Stance
Media can have powerful effects on the public’s perception and attitudes towards any political event. The words, images, and videos they broadcasted have been carefully chosen in order to achieve their intended message. In a sense, all news is biased on the selected information of journalists to be communicated or not to be communicated.
Thus, as public, we are affected, by reading or watching what media want us to. Also, this non-objective coverages could have a significant impact on our political behaviour, political attitudes and political knowledge as we learn politics through the media we consume.
Before the protest
Media bias can have a significant impact on the public’s political behaviour. The protest has happened because the media in two places have written news from the opposite ankle and the media bias have been stored in public's memory which tends to dominate their opinions. As a result, the Hongkong local show a negative attitude towards the mainland government’s political decision, while the Chinese mainland residents consider the Hongkong residents want to be completely free from China. In order to be more specific, there is two news coverage’s title from each side of the HongKong protest report about the HongKong police that is also the incident of the campus protest.
The coverage from a Hongkong media company about the police attacking the protester:https://hk.news.appledaily.com/local/daily/article/20190709/20724098
The translation of the Hongkong media coverage’s tile: From https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google+translate&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
The Chinese mainland’s news coverage title about supporting the police from a media company in China:http://www.xinhuanet.com/gangao/2019-08/11/c_1124860972.htm
The translation of the Chinese mainland report’s headline
The protest
From the report’s title, we can tell the media determine the selected information to be communicated. In turn, the public who live in this two different political system have been effected by those information and it eventually affect their political behavior. The Chinese Hong Kong residents have been leaded to believe the police have attacked innocent residents, therefore, they voiced their thoughts in campus to against the Chinese mainland government as well as the Hongkong police. While Chinese mainland student misunderstand their intention and their protest slogan because of the media coverage they have read is supporting the polices and the government’s decision, so they are opposite to each other in the protest.
After the protest
However, why media bias can be powerful?
This is because of media control from the government who use its effects and power to restrict the first-hand sources, as a consequent, when the original information fail to be objective, the powerful media bias is produced while the news is being delivered. Although democracy has always been tightly connected with the media, “media control” is regarded as an indispensable part of an autocratic system.
After the protest happened in UQ campus, the Chinese media and the Australia media have written the news differently because their sources is cultural and organizational that lead to the distinguishing media bias.
The few sections of after report from Chinese media: https://m.ausproperty.cn/intro/china-aus/624422.html
The translation of the report.
By reading the after news coverage from Australian media’s news company and the Chinese media’s news company respectively, we can see how media control is producing the media bias as both of the report is both non-objective and against each point.
Accordingly, some of Australian will hold the bias towards Chinese mainland student after reading the coverage from news that describe the attacking behavior as well as the primary intention of the protest. While some of the Chinese will tend to believe the hongkong protest is for free Hongkong from China, not for the seeking solution purpose.
To be critical about the news
As we are all passive readers of read the news coverage we see we need to understand it comes to us with a pre-determined with political standpoint., But the internet is also a good tool for us to find the truth, to read the news report in different versions and always be critical about what we read or watch. Primarily, do not allow the media completely control us through their bias.
