In this sad era of bitter, divisive partisanship, common ground has crumbled and the issues on which left and right can agree have dwindled to a precious few. Thus I am especially happy to recommend (for one reason that will be clear only in a moment) an excellent OpEd by Edward E. Kaufman, “Freedom of the Press,” that has just appeared in the Washington Times.
Kaufman is a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the organization that oversees all U.S. nonmilitary international broadcasting. His OpEd, written on the occasion of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the U.S., calls upon the Chinese to match their rhetoric of cooperation with concrete steps to loosen their strangle hold on the free flow of information inside China.
Some Excerpts:
Specifically, the Chinese jam the shortwave radio broadcasts of the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) and block their Internet sites….
As a result, the Chinese people — the world’s largest population — have a distorted and unrealistic view of the United States, learned from Chinese government-controlled outlets, American movies, television shows and music videos. Those sources are hardly a reflection of the United States….
In fact, the information that 1.3 billion Chinese receive is often false, erroneous and damaging to the United States. In May, for instance, a Hong Kong newspaper,Wenweipo, speculated that SARS, the often-fatal respiratory disease, had originated in the United States….
Finally, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua and other government news organizations have as many as 40 bilingual correspondents in the United States, with an open request for six more. VOA currently has only two English-speaking journalists in Beijing. China is refusing to accredit two additional journalists on the grounds that they speak Mandarin….
Kaufman concludes with a telling quote from the Tang Dynasty: “Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened; listen to only one side and you will be benighted.”
I am pleased to recommend this OpEd both because its argument is compelling, and also because it is increasingly rare as an argument that both Left and Right can and should enthusiastically endorse. Kaufman himself, as a matter of fact, was for a long time chief of staff, campaign treasurer, etc., etc. to an influential Democratic Senator. More to the point, and the other reason I’m happy to recommend his piece, is that he’s my brother-in-law, and we haven’t agreed on much (except his sister) in a good while.
When I was growing up it was said by some wag that more books were written in Mississippi every year than were read there. I liked that because, growing up in Alabama as I did, Mississippi was about the only place we could look down on. I thought of that today, and mention it here, because I suspect that Ted has now written more words in the Washington Times than he’s read there. But hey, they’re fine words, and you should read them.
