Ever wonder what is really happening? When the US spends millions of dollars and months of diplomatic time to fly the Secretaries of State and Treasury to China and have all the coverage about a blind man?
Or to send the President to the Latin American Summit to discuss the failed US drug war policy that all the latin leaders want to end…. and have all the coverage about secret service men rooking hookers?
The PR pros call it distraction. We News Readers call it the News Shadow.
How do you get around it? You read the foreign news. Best in the local language, but here at least is the China story that is hidden:
CHINA denied that the yuan is undervalued and pressed Washington to ease controls on exports of high-tech goods on the first day of the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged China to let the currency strengthen and open its markets wider.
However, Trade Minister Chen Deming denied the yuan was undervalued and pointed to China’s shrinking global trade surplus. China reported a US$5.3 billion surplus in March, down from a monthly level of at least US$15 billion for most of 2011.
“Given that China’s global trade is basically balanced while running a surplus with the US shows that the exchange rate plays a minimal role in trade,” Chen told reporters.
Geithner urged further appreciation of the yuan while acknowledging China’s plan to overhaul its financial system to increase support for private enterprise and reduce special treatment for state-owned companies.
“The United States has a strong interest in the success of these reforms,” he said.
“A stronger, more market-determined currency would reinforce China’s reform objectives of moving to higher value-added production, reforming the financial system and encouraging domestic demand,” he said.
The yuan has gained more than 13 percent over the past two years since China announced an acceleration of exchange rate reform. With the yuan standing at around 6.3 against the dollar, Chinese authorities said earlier that the yuan had approached a relatively fair value.
from:
http://english.eastday.com/e/120504/u1a6531142.html
In other words, the Chinese have granted a strengthening of their currency, as requested agains ours, but Timothy Geithner says that is not fast enough. Now. What kind of headline would that make?
Thus our News Shadow is covering domestically what the world at large is learning. Whenever there is a big story that is inane and goes on incessantly, such as the OJ Simpson story, or ‘baby Jessica’, or any of Michael Jackson’s, Elizabeth Taylor’s or uncountable celebrity’s stories, one must ask, ‘What is being hidden behind this screen?’: The News Shadow.
It is my opinion that still too few of us realize the depth of propaganda in which we are immersed. The way out of it is so simple, yet requires collective action. We must fund the free press by free citizens. This is not free: gratis. If free individuals pay for more than 60% of the press, whatever it is, that press is free to investigate where the facts lead. If commercial interests pay for more than 50% of a publication of media source, it limits the realm of coverage. The old saw: ‘Do not bite the hand that feeds.’ is ever true. It may not be formal commercial censorship… the simple common sense of an editor wishing to keep his or her job and please the employer is all that is required.
No offense to blind Chen Chuangchen, Michael Jackson, or the news splash personality of the moment. Independent of their plight, they are, and have been used by forces far bigger than they. It will tend to border upon some wedge issue of the moment; that emotion makes it all the more effective distraction.
Today, as flagged by the News Shadow, one can tell when events are drawing toward some item that requires veiling. So consider it a hint when the news is especially vapid. Or is the wedge is an issue that enflames your emotions, especially infuriating.
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