Thread by @EmanuelStoakes

Two pieces of NZ's Chinese-language media scene have dropped recently. (Full disclosure one of them is my article with @Anne_MarieBrady, @SdBachman   & @e2020nz ).
There's detail in each worth paying attn to. (thread/1)newsroom.co.nz/academics-inve…

First point: as bad as partisanship in English lang media can be - I can't recalling seeing a front page article that ended with encouragements for readers to vote for a certain candidate during elex season, Aug 2020? archive.is/l5jku

The final lines in question are: "She has excellent communication skills and professional competence. She is such an outstanding young Chinese lady, don’t you want to pick her right away?" /3

We asked the CH for explanation on what these lines meant. While they replied to other questions they didn't answer this one (yet). In the interests of fairness, they have run profiles on a range of candidates from a range of parties over the years, including this latest one / 4

Of National candidate Carlos Cheung recently. Again, it's v uncritical, almost a glowing portrait. This doesn't strike me as 'normal' journalism, but they're free to act as they wish within the regulations. archive.is/yzYcQ

Returning to the previous example, it features 2020 Nats candidate Nancy Lu; of whom former-spy trainer Jian Yang (ex-MP) said he had "trained... as a candidate for a long time," adding" I have never revealed it, not even to my colleagues” [in the National Party]". Which is weird

(citations for that are in our piece). NL was also featured in a nic profile around the same time in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily (see: ). This is around NZ election 2020.archive.is/jMnrp

[erratum: *nice]
Anyway, while I imply no consequentiality, it is worth noting that both the owner of the Chinese Herald and a New Zealand-based publisher of the overseas edition of the People’s Daily hv made big donations to National.

There was much, much more than we could fit onto the pages of our analysis that deserves a mention. Briefly: I did a search for patterns of emphasis and elision, incl. in coverage of sensitive topics, assisted by my colleagues + Portia.

Take for example one of Jacinda's most high-profile critical statements of the PRC, back in 2020 at the NZ-China business summit. You'd think that'd be worth a mention? Not in Skykiwi. It just isn't in there:  They cover the event, but omit her criticisms.archive.is/Tvz9H

11/ While it's possible I could have missed something, I detected no reporting of the Peng Shuai scandal, which happened to be censored in the Chinese mainland press. It's a meaningful story so why not cover it?

On the other hand, when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year, they ran THREE stories over THREE consecutive days on damaging allegs about her husband: ; https://t.co/3UmyVsqUWj; https://t.co/dKSvNMFxVT
Coincidence?archive.ph/VOkGD
archive.ph/4xEfP
archive.ph/oQXhb

Like many of the most dodgy reporting I've seen these were taken from mainland or intl sources. But this itself is a problem, since so much of the syndicated material is from PRC's regulated press

Of course I'm not going to go so far as to call Skykiwi / C Herald mere instruments of the CCP, but there does seem to be a dynamic in which they're incentivised to take this kind of copy. Perhaps it's cheap and timely to do so.

Anyway, let's turn quickly to this piece (hit google translate if needed): rfa.org/english/news/a…

By reporter Tang Jiajie, it details the experiences of Chinese Kiwis who set up independent / centre-perspective sinophone media here in Aotearoa NZ. They talk about the difficulties of writing freely on apps like We Chat, which dominate social media scen

[*the social media scene] But there are other (alleged) pressures: the embassy itself is accused of playing a role in making it harder for one of these publications to operate, hitting its bottom line.

Other dissenting writers feat. in the article say directly that "any articles critical of China...cannot be published In New Zealand's Chinese-language media." But that's not all

Lao @chenweijian2011 has also claimed that his operations were actually pushed to breaking point by the Akl Consulate's interference - allegedly, advertisers starting dropping him as a result, he says

@chenweijian2011 There's plenty more I could say - incl. in response to what the Chinese Herald said about our coverage of some of their articles, which I might save for another day. But the point is - what kind of media enviro do we want for Chinese Kiwis?

@chenweijian2011 21/ Do we want a space where fuller representation of community views, better coverage of intl affairs and no one lives in fear of external pressures? Are Chinese-NZers being fully served by the status quo?