We talk glibly about our future in Asia, but we are stuck in a US and UK media cul de sac.

The Washington consensus and our legacy media frames and conditions our thinking and actions. It promotes fear of Asia, the yellow peril.

An updated post from August 23, 2021

The White Paper Australia in the Asian Century in 2012 singled out our need to work with Australian media through its representative bodies, to ensure that Australians received more and better coverage of the Asian region. It highlighted that the government should seek to work collaboratively through “expert panels, ongoing exchange programs and the like” to boost coverage which would enhance knowledge and understanding of the region.

But nothing much happened. In fact, Australian media is now less interested and has less coverage of Asia that it was two decades ago. Another retreat from Asia!

Our mainstream media is not interested in, and often quite hostile to, Asia.

Our media view of the world as framed by Washington is accepted as true and right. Minor domestic events in the US are preferred to major regional news out of Indonesia or China.

Our journalists have been on the Washington drip-feed for so long that most are incapable of seeing the world differently. They have been groomed by decades of endless US propaganda.

US legacy media — CNN, Washington Post, The New York Times, Fox News and Western news agencies, AP, Reuters and AFP — in association with drivers of US power and privilege, the military, business, think-tanks and security agencies exert dangerous and destructive influence that has contributed to the killing of millions of people.

That legacy media disguises the way that the US has overthrown numerous governments around the world.

Many of our journalists, who attack China relentlessly, have little or no experience of China let alone any Chinese language skills. On overseas assignments they seldom go beyond the Australian Embassy/Consulate and the Foreign Correspondents Club. I saw it regularly in Tokyo.

How professional are journalists who could put their names to the Red Alert almost three years ago in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald? The “world view” we get in Australia from these “journalists” is a derivative view of the world as seen from London, New York and Washington.

Most of the news we get in Australia about China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam is via Western news agencies. These media snapshots are usually about the exotic and dangerous – a coup here, a flood there and corruption somewhere else.

Our “colonial” media structure was laid down long ago. It remains today.

We talk glibly about our future in Asia, but we are stuck in a US and UK media cul de sac.

Australia and the West have plundered the South Pacific with missionaries, traders, forced migration, labour abuse, discrimination and then nuclear tests. But when the countries of the South Pacific want to develop alternative relations with China our media, encouraged by Washington, warn us about debt traps and Chinese military bases.

Australian Poseidon aircraft run regular surveillance flights and our Navy conducts exercises off the Chinese coast, but our media has a fit when Chinese vessels run checks on US bases around Australia that have been established to provide a platform for possible US attacks on China.

In 2013, I approached Media Monitors and asked it to consider collecting and publishing regular data on the anti-Asian bias of our mainstream media. We needed facts to support our case that our media had little interest in Asia. Media Monitors declined my proposal unless I could find a sponsor to fund the project. I followed up with a suggestion to the Department of Foreign affairs and Trade to fund such a project. The secretary of the Department didn’t respond. Once again, a lot of lip service about our future with Asia, but seldom followed up with action.

Our media tell us incessantly about Chinese human rights breaches. It is not that Chinese human rights record has worsened or is beyond criticism. What has changed, and what is feared, is the growing power and influence of China. It is successful. That is seen as a threat to US hegemony.

The US has rained death, destruction and displacement on tens of millions of Muslims in the Middle East over the past 20 years. Now US media and its Australian acolytes show a remarkable and belated concern about the persecution of Muslims in China.

Led by the US, our media showed no interest in “democracy” in Hong Kong throughout a century of British rule. But now that Hong Kong is recognised as part of China, the US Government, supported by its media, has suddenly become concerned about democracy and independence for Hong Kong.

And what Western media can honestly talk about other county’s breaches of human rights when it is complicit in the genocide in Gaza?

The CIA ran a partially successful campaign in the Philippines to discredit Chinese vaccines in the recent COVID pandemic. Many died as a result.

The Pentagon, and other government agencies such as the CIA, not only support film and cable production in Hollywood, but actively intervene and manipulate the content.

A long list of former US security chiefs e.g. John Brennan and James Clapper, joined US media – NBC, MSNBC and CNN.

Australian security and intelligence heads have been leading the demonisation of China with regular “news drops” to compliant journalists. The Department of Defence and the ABC have a very friendly arrangement. A new Chinese threat almost every week.

With 90% of the input of Five Eyes coming from the CIA, our ministers get a daily intake of the US view of the world.

Our legacy media clings like a limpet to Washington.

We used to have a policy to keep Asians out of Australia. It was called the White Australia policy. We abolished that policy several decades ago.

But our media still clings to its own version of White Australia – keep Asian news out unless it can be used to stir up fear of Asia.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.