U.S. bombing in denial

Thoughts From Here
    By Sonia Lin

We live in an age of imperfect, short-lived news and information overkill. Stories rise and disappear from our collective consciousness, eventually sinking into the ocean of past news with scarcely more than a trivia bubble. Sometimes, however, stories we thought we had put away resurface in a new, uncomfortable light.

For example, take the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last May. It was an accident, the U.S. proclaimed loudly and impatiently, as the Chinese responded with anger. Bungled bureaucracy, outdated maps—whoops, we seemed to say. Why aren't you Chinese people more forgiving?

The American media coverage quickly turned our focus away from the Pentagon's outrageous bombing of an embassy to the "stubborn" resistance of the Chinese to accept flimsy American explanations and apologies. This resistance was blamed on efforts by China's leaders to take advantage of the tragedy in order to fan the flames of nationalist outrage among the Chinese people. Few American journalists questioned the "fact" that this bombing was purely accidental.

Recently, however, it is the American version of the facts that has come into question. On Sun., Oct. 17, the London Observer published an investigative story that reported that the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy may have been intentional. Quoting an unnamed NATO official, the Observer alleged that the embassy was removed from a list of protected Belgrade locales after it was discovered that the embassy was broadcasting signals from Belgrade headquarters to the Serb army.

The possibility that this bombing may have been a deliberate act certainly raises many questions about U.S.-China relations—but these aren't the only concerns on the table. The fact that the American press has yet to acknowledge these new allegations raises a different set of serious questions altogether.

Why hasn't the New York Times mentioned this London Observer report? As the Chinese government makes headlines with its crackdown on members of the Falun Gong religious group, the pages of the international section, as of this writing, have yet to report on the new allegations against the United States government.

This media silence should prompt fresh doubt about the reliability of our news and information. Though we scrutinize the propagandistic press in China, it is possible that we can be just as manipulated by our own media.

It is true that in China the press is controlled and censored by the government, while in America it is free and intended to advance us toward some kind of truth. But now the American press seems to be taking us somewhere else. Journalism has become a celebrity profession, cozy in bed with national politics and Hollywood movie-making. Driven by famous names and ratings, tangled under the ownership of huge commercial conglomerates, the fourth estate is increasingly less reliable in its role as public watchdog.

This may not matter as much considering our taste for scandalous entertainment disguised as news. But what about the serious topics, topics for which we have limited information sources? How can we profess to know anything about foreign affairs when the news is first churned through the fractured lens of U.S. media conglomerates before reaching us? We cannot afford silence from the mainstream press on key issues like the Chinese embassy bombing, especially when the decisions of our leaders are concerned—decisions which could possibly have caused the deliberate deaths of innocent people.

Recent Herald Columns by this Columnist:
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• At Yale, we miss the great adventure, 10/22/99
• College teenyboppers, act your age, 10/8/99
• Combatting American cynicism, 9/24/99

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