Lying Media Bastards
Last month, I told you that American media was complicit in an immoral propaganda campaign against China, and expressed alarm at how gullible the American public has become. Now that two Chinese officials are dead over the fiasco, the Vice President of Mattel admits that the news was all lies. He says, “The vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel’s design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China’s manufacturers.”
Although it should have been obvious to anyone with common sense, I never would have expected Mattel to admit this so quickly and frankly. Few American companies these days, and no Asian company, would ever lose face the way Mattel has voluntarily done. In fact, one of the Chinese officials who died committed suicide (the other was executed) over the toy recall, so strong was the crisis of losing face. This willingness to put transparency and honesty above propriety is perhaps the only good thing that America is exporting to the rest of the world. Now if only George Bush would admit fault and issue an apology, the rest of the world might start to believe that America actually does have some values to share.
Of course, Mattel probably had some selfish motivations in issuing the apology, and I can’t say how complicit they were in misleading the press initially. But the real culprits here are the reporters (and increasingly, citizens who trust reporters). We have been trained to assume that powerful people like politicians and business leaders lie. The press are supposed to “speak truth to power”; to “fact-check their asses”. They are supposed to be our protection against government and corporate brainwashing campaigns, not accomplices. But this time, they completely failed us. And there is no excuse — it was easy enough for someone with common sense to see that the stories didn’t add up. It was easy enough to see that the wild allegations were not backed up with facts. Yet none of the vaunted journalists bothered to do even a modicum of research to see if the conclusions they were publishing seemed reasonable.
Mattel is apologizing, but where is the mea culpa from the American media? When will these jerks run a retraction saying, “The vast majority of the stories we’ve reported about China in the past 6 months have been filled with wild allegations which turned out later to be false”? And yes I mean the whole media. Not even GNN stood up to the lies this time. It’s a bad day indeed for America when the VP of a toy company comes across as being more honest and transparent than the American media.
BTW, I know a lot of reporters read my blog. In last month’s blog post, I challenged the media and laid out more than enough of the case for an enterprising journalist to start unraveling the propaganda campaign. I expected that a story like this apology would break due to a reporter gathering the facts and challenging a corporate executive. Apparently, that was a very naive expectation. This story came about due to a corporate executive disclosing incriminating facts that the journalists weren’t even interested in gathering.
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Sigh… Ten minutes later, CNN is running this headline, implying that China is killing American babies. The headlines on Bloomberg and elsewhere are worse: “Chinese-made cribs recalled due to infant deaths”.
When you read all the way through the article, you find that the cribs are being recalled because of a design defect that allows people to install the gate upside-down. So blame the company who designed the cribs (based in Pennsylvania), or the owners who ignored the instructions and put them together wrong. Once again, this article has nothing to do with China. A more accurate headline would be “Pennsylvania-designed cribs recalled due to infant deaths”. Just imagine if one of these reporters was doing a story about Ken Lay’s Enron fraud and used the headline “Thousands lose pensions due to fraud at company which employed black people.” They would be fired immediately, and they should be fired for this headline too. The fact that the cribs were manufactured in China is not relevant to the story, and can only serve to prejudice the audience and mask the real culpability.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:33 am
I was listening to WJR in Detroit this morning. The national news service (I think ABC) reported about a national steriod bust that closed dozens of steriod labs.
This is how the story ended. “Where did the labs get their chemicals to make the steroids? From China…”
I hope there’s no lead in my supply!
September 24th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
I think the point of the stories on CNN is not to blame China but to call attention to problems and defects of goods that are imported.
Personally I don’t care if it’s China or Mattel’s fault, whoever is in charge should know better than to use lead based paint in things that are totally toxic. It causes death.. I don’t really feel the people in charge should be commiting suicide, but that’s what we get in a world where the penalties are much more stringent and I might remind you that is *NOT* a democracy.
Also finding stuff like Radiator Fluid materials in imported toothpaste. This is just two examples of things that shouldn’t hit the market here or there..
I know there are a lot more citizens there, but the damage inflicted to us here (which we are catching) can’t be as damaging as it is to the people there where it’s obviously all right to have these things used.
China should be looking after their own people with higher standards for chemicals and base components of their goods first. Why? because this will be a disaster for their own people that’s probably already going on and we are watching from afar.
They shouldn’t use toxic substances in their own products over there or be sending it here. China has to get touch with their standards because their world is obviously more polluted than ours is, but since the goods are making their way here (since our companies don’t seem to care whether it be toothpaste, catfood, or mattel toys).
Quality control standards need to be implemented by the only people that can do it, our government. Standards for quality and health need to be met wherever you are at. It looks like China needs to be improving theirs, while other companies like Mattel do not look the other way, while poisonous goods enter because they didn’t follow through.
Yes Mattel needs to take blame and has, but the country of origin of goods needs to follow the standards of quality for the goods that they export into other markets as well. It’s obvious the assurance of that wasn’t happening with Mattel and others, and those companies and the country of origin need to take equal responsibility.
I honestly think your point really doesn’t hit what the problem is, as we have two countries wading through a toxic mess and both of those countries deserve better quality control standards for both countries people.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Don: I am sorry, but you are still propagating malicious and unsubstantiated falsehoods.
“It looks like China needs to be improving theirs, while other companies like Mattel do not look the other way, while poisonous goods enter because they didn’t follow through.”
This has NOTHING to do with Mattel “looking the other way”. Mattel designed a product a specific way, and paid Chinese employees to build the product EXACTLY the way Mattel specified. If the Chinese had not built the products that way, they would not have gotten the business. The Chinese operated precisely to Mattel’s direct specifications and orders.
It is immoral, unethical, and twisted to claim that the Chinese “screwed up” and Mattel “looked the other way”. Please never spread such scurrilous lies without proof, especially since Mattel has publicly said that this is NOT what happened.
The exact same is the case with the infant crib deaths. This is not a matter of Chinese errors and American negligence. It is a clear case of American error and negligence.
I repeat, in 99% of these cases, the county of origin (China) DID meet and exceed all quality standards for their goods. So the sanctimonious newspeople talking about “China needs to meet quality control” are blowing completely unsubstantiated smoke. All of the evidence now shows that recalls are FAR more common due to errors and failures on the American side, than on the Chinese side. Statistically, a product is more likely to be safe if it includes Chinese components in its supply chain. We now have reports of organic foods made in the U.S. spreading salmonella.
This idea of “Made in China == crappy” is doomed to die a swift death. Chinese manufacturers have been building for Japan for decades, and Japanese have far higher quality expectations than the U.S. Chinese manufacturers are now competitive and even better than U.S. in many many categories by now. This is not a situation like “Made in Taiwan” was 30 years ago. People who make such a connection are brainwashed and ignorant of facts.
September 26th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Just to be fair about the execution, the guy was found to be guilty of taking bribes ($800k US) to permit untested medications into the Chinese marketplace. I’m not one for capital punishment, but if the US were completely fair in its application of the penalty, there would be MANY white collar criminals (public and private) on the block since their immoral actions led to the death of many consumers. While capital punishment is not a deterrant for the mostly black and poor that end up on death row in Texas, I imagine its a lot more effective on rich people of all skin pigments. I can think of a whole host of white collar crimes that caused death yet no one spent any jail time much less faced a needle.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Grant: In China, corruption is endemic. The cynical view is that death penalty is applied commensurate with how far an official falls out of power and pisses off a more powerful rival, rather than commensurate with the magnitude of the corruption. This guy was simply guilty of being too flagrant with his concubines and cars. Normal people all want to appear to be richer and more powerful than they are, while government officials want to appear as poor as possible — the guy was taking kickbacks in such a visible and ostentatious way, which is a death sentence.
September 29th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
“Now if only George Bush would admit fault and issue an apology … ”
Don’t you mean if only Islam would admit fault and issue an apology?
October 1st, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I always wonder if corruption is just inevitable in human affairs. Another word for corruption is “service charge” which are enshrined in many western cultures. It’s a shame he was executed for conspicous consumption of corruption (CCC), I had hoped he was punished for deliberately endangering and causing harm to the lives of others. Still, I can’t help but admire a country that executes someone for CCC instead of the states like Texas, where one gets executed for being B & P.
October 9th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Well being a Chinese and a bilinguist , it’s an interesting combination, because I know I can’t count on the notorious journalism under communist administration, but just when I was about to rely on media sources like CNN and NYT that I found the western jornalism does nothing better than their communist counterpart. Arrogant, hostile, stereotyped…So finally I wonder whether we could ever believe in something from paper or TV?