By Jaylyn Preslicka, Staff Reporter
A lot of reporters need to start carrying a dictionary on hand. Most media sources' hot “got-to” topic has been COVID-19 and its alleged origin in China within the past few months. A part of the discussion has been the data the Chinese government has sent to the World Health Organization (WHO) and how the numbers have been falsified.
While there is no issue with reporting on China’s falsification of data, reporters across all political spectrums put the censorship blame on their Communist government. Communism is not the reason their data is falsified, it is their totalitarian dictator-state. By blaming the recent censorship issue on Communism itself, it misleads Americans into thinking that radical left politics do not equal freedom.
Despite the year being 2020, many Americans are still fearful of a “Red Scare.” The term originated during the Cold War when philosopher Karl Marx’s theory of Communism had spread to various countries and made Western governments fearful of a proletariat-led revolution demolishing capitalism. However, this issue is still relevant even today, decades later.
According to the American Press Institute, ”Americans trust the news they hear directly from news-gathering organizations, with 43 percent of people saying they trust the information acquired this way either very much or completely, [and] 44 percent saying they trust it moderately.” In addition, according to further research via search engines only “ 32 percent who get news via search say they trust the information they provide.”
This data shows that very few Americans bother to read further or question the topics they hear from their trusted news source. If someone were to hear the word “communism” in a negative way, they might not realize that -- in this case -- it is in reference to their style of government, not how they run it.
On April 6, Fox News ran a segment on the Hollywood film industry and how there is a deal to cut out scenes China deems “immoral” (i.e. homosexuality, slander against the country, etc). Senator Ted Cruz and Journalist Tucker Carlson spoke about how this was harmful and brought up a lawsuit against the Chinese Communist Party for their censorship.
China may have skewed the data and covered up data, but that has nothing to do with their Marxist-Leninist government. Today’s standards of radical left politics does not promote censorship and, if anything, was founded on being inclusive. This is something reporters don’t connect.
“I think that ruling class people are so utterly afraid that the working class is finally gonna understand that they deserve better, so they use China and stalinist ussr as their only references of ‘communism’ even though they are two places that took marx-engels communism and made it unrecognizable (sic),” La-Salle High School sophomore Patrizia Quimby-Moro said.
China runs under a dictatorship, a style of governing that the American government has supported in the past. It is easy to attack a radical government, especially in a society where capitalism is valued greatly. China is an oppressive country and while their methods of handling the virus as well as their people should not be advocated for, it has nothing to do with Communism’s true ideas.
Until the Western media ceases its misconstrued statements on communism, we will continue to have a corrupt view on politics.
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