Monday, March 14, 2005

Philip Bennett - fool and disgrace

LGF, Powerline and Drudge all caught an interview done by China's Peoples' Daily with Washington Post Managing Editor Philip Bennett. LGF and Powerline concentrated on Bennett's comment that "I don't think the US should be leader of the world" giving the Chicomms a huge propaganda victory.

Well, if you looked at the transcript of the entire interview (click title) its even worse. Bennett is partisan, not particularly bright and obsequious to a sickening extent to China and the Peoples' Daily:

My job is helping my readers trying to understand what is happening now. What is happening now is very difficult to understand. The world is very complex. There are various complex forces occurring in it.


Brilliant.

If we are heading into another period of imperialism where the US thinks itself as the leader of the area and its interest should prevail over all other interests of its neighbors and others, then I think the world will be in an unhappy period.

Equating the US with imperialism...Pravda would have loved this guy.

Democracy means many things. How do you define democracy? As a Chinese journalist, you may have your own definition of democracy which corresponds to your history and your way of seeing the world. I may have another definition. Someone else may have their own definitions. Democracy means a lot of different things.


What a complete jacka*s. Should have just said "The Chinese aren't really fit for democracy."

We don't have any political point of view that we are trying to advance.


Oh? [and in the next paragraph]

One of the jobs of our correspondents in Baghdad is to tell our readers what the Bush administration is trying to hide.


For me, this episode is a good example of how difficult it is to independently verify the government's claims when the government is lying to you. The newspaper is incapable of going to Iraq and find out for itself whether it has WMD or not. The closest that we may come is to report very closely on the UN's effort to determine if the regime has WMD in Iraq. But in the run-up to the war in Iraq, the UN is very close to US administration's view that there was a high probability that Iraq has WMD.


Talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Every time when we publish a story about Iraq that suggests the war is not going well for America, I get lots of messages from people saying that we the Post are not patriotic and we are reporting negatively on the war only because of our political bias against the Bush administration.


Ever heard of Arthur Chrenkoff? [You can read Chrenkoff's latest update on Iraq here.]

Yong Tang: Do your correspondents in China have difficulties in getting the access to the information?

Bennett: Yes, but we have difficult in the access to the information here in Washington DC too.


Relativism, much?

I was very impressed by the degree of preparation, engagement, knowledge and vision that [China's leaders] have of China and China's role in the world. There is no more complex job in the world in trying to run and administer a country so big with so many different issues, with people living in good wealth and poverty as well. The job is much more difficult than being an American President though they are different jobs in some ways.


Brown-nosing as an art form.

We recognize the history of People's Daily as an important newspaper in China that has played an important role in China's transformation.

How? As an organ that parrots the official view? Just like Pravda and Izvestia in the good old days?

Philip Bennett is absolute disgrace.

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