I noticed that there are a number of articles from various media agencies that only repeat the Filipino narrative. Now, what is supposed to happen is that the media agencies are supposed to ask the affected parties to comment, which would have been the best time to advise that this was a civilian salvage and rescue operation.
Again, this should have been addressed by a 24/7 news monitoring and public relations centre on the Israeli model.
That is assuming the media actually wants to report the truth, which it absolutely does not want to for China because of the special interests that owns the news don't want that.
The Israeli news monitoring centre works not because they ring up and kindly inform the relevant news outlets they have erred, and those news agencies cheerfully accepts the booboo and apologies.
Do you know how astonishingly rare it is for news agencies to issue a retraction and apology?
The Israeli effort works because of the enormous political, economical and social influence the Jewish-American cuscus wields.
Often the Israeli centre doesn't call the news desk, they call the owners of the news organisations directly.
Because of historical, social and political reasons, Jews hold incredibly powerful positions in almost all of the centres of power in America, be it in the financial, political, media or entertaining sectors. Consequently, Israel is in a category all of its own when it comes to how much favour it is given.
The casual observer could easily be forgiven for thinking American elections are for the United States of Israel for how much candidates pledge unwavering loyalty and devotion to Israel, and how much of a political poison pill it is to be even accused of not being pro-Israel (I cannot recall of any single significant US politician who can even be loosely described as anti-Israel, since such a person would simply be unelectable and probably branded a lot worse).
No one is even close to being in the same league as Israel, not even America's forever loyal puddle the UK.
For China to try to behave as if it has the same pull as Israel is just clearly an exercise in futility.
The only way to counter media bias is to hit the special interests that drive that bias where it hurts - in their pockets.
What China absolutely should do is pass a responsible media law to fine media organisations for bad reporting.
Make it perfectly fair and above board. Send out complaints about untruthful factual 'slip ups' and omissions, not moderating or correcting blatant lies spoken by guests etc, giving the news organisations opportunity to justify themselves. Make everything public.
Any instances where factual errors have been made would require the news organisation to make a public apology and retraction at the same time slot as the one when the original mistake was made, for a minimal length of the same time as the original error, ideally by the some person who originally made the mistake.
Failure to do so will see the news organisation get slapped with modest, but exponentially increasing fines based on the number of offences committed.
Those fines can go directly into the coffers of the enforcement agency, so the biased media is actually paying for the enforcement.
The media will predictably scream bloody murder over it, but it will work, and may set a model for global news and media standards enforcement, which is desperately needed in my view.
