Author: Scotty Hendricks / Source: Big Think
- The South China Morning Post is a respected paper with a long and noble history that has recently made more than a few missteps.
- Critics of the paper allege that it has fallen into the hands of Beijing and is now little more than a propaganda outlet.
- The use of a legitimate news source to peddle propaganda is nothing new, but it may be the shape of things to come.
We are awash in fake news. It just isn’t from the places the people seemingly most concerned with the problem think its from. The problems of entire websites, papers, and televisions networks that spew easily falsified garbage into the world are well known.
More concerning, perhaps, are the cases when legitimate sources are brought down into the muck. It is all the more dangerous because a history of accurate and unbiased reporting can make a propaganda sheet seem like legitimate news. As a case study, consider the decline and fall of the South China Morning Post.
Propaganda from a trusted news source
The South China Morning Post is one of the oldest papers in Hong Kong. Recently, it was sold to the Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the owner of the Alibaba conglomerate who recently became a member of the Communist Party. This event raised more than a few eyebrows.
Since Alibaba’s take over of the paper, some strange articles have made their way into it. Frequent BigThink readers might recall the news that China had invented a laser gun capable of burning clothing at a great distance despite the agreement of scientists that the weapon as described would violate the laws of physics. Another recent article explained how Chinese scientists have altered the atomic properties of copper to have similar properties to gold in a way that could leave you thinking they had pulled off acts of pure alchemy.
A bigger problem might be the recent political turn of the paper. Ever since its purchase by Alibaba the paper has been moving into the orbit of Beijing. In 2016 the newspaper printed an interview with the famed Chinese dissident Zhao Wei in which she recanted her past activism. Just how the paper got an interview with a person in detention was never explained, and the conversation looked suspiciously…
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