Walter Duranty is one of the most infamous names in the history of fake news. Duranty’s notoriety primarily stems from his incessant praise of the Soviet Union, and Stalin in particular, in the 1930s. Most notoriously, Duranty emphatically denied the widespread famine in the Soviet Union, even as some seven million people starved to death in the Holodomor.
It should surprise no-one that Duranty wrote on retainer for the New York Times, and won a Pulitzer for his knowing lies (Duranty’s private correspondence clearly shows that he was well aware of the scale of the famine).
The Soviet Union may no longer exist, but the world’s remaining communist super-power is just as busily buying the loyalty of foreign journalists.
Several Chinese Communist Party-linked groups – including the regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs – have subsidized trips to China for American journalists in an effort to “enhance” their understanding of U.S.-China relations since the 1990’s, The National Pulse can reveal from recovered webpages deleted by program sponsors.
Among the outlets sending journalists to participate in the trips are The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio (NPR), CNN, Reuters, POLITICO, and more.
These are the cream of the American left-media establishment. And they’ve all been on the take from the Chinese Communist Party.
The “China-United States Journalism Exchange” is sponsored by the New York-based East-West Center, All-China Journalists Association, and the Better Hong Kong Foundation. Inaugurated in 2010, the program expanded upon a 1996 initaitive “supported” by the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that granted free trips to China for journalists from mainstream American media outlets.
The effort is closely tied to the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a foreign influence group operating under the Chinese government’s United Work Front Department.
The United Front is the Chinese Communist Party’s chief foreign propaganda and influence peddler. It’s aims are “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” to the Chinese regime and “influence foreign governments and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies”.
It achieves that by throwing plenty of old-fashioned payola at the mainstream media.
The trips are subsidized by the aforementioned Chinese Communist Party-linked sponsors:
The program covers all air transportation, lodging, and program-related ground transportation and meals for participating journalists.
Deleted webpages from the East-West Center documenting the 2011 delegation reveal American journalists “enhanc[ing] their understanding on US-China relations” from lectures by Chinese Communist Party officials[…]
Other deleted webpages reveal that high-level editors from state-run Chinese outlets – including the Deputy Director of the People’s Liberation Army Daily paper – comprising the delegations.
If this is all above-board, why is China keen to keep it a secret – locked up tighter than a Wuhan virologist’s lab notes?
Details surrounding program participants, sponsors, and activities were wiped from the East-West Center’s website in late 2017.
The National Pulse
The spirit of Walter Duranty is alive and well in American journalism.
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD
){kind=link}