Nobody commenting on this has ever visited Xinjiang. Nobody writing these articles has ever visited Xinjiang.
It’s funny, because you absolutely can get first-person accounts of journalists visiting Xinjiang. And you can get information directly out of social media published in and around Xinjiang, particularly if you’re fluent in their native languages. But sending journalists to China is expensive and travel logs from these regions don’t make for explosive click-bait articles.
in China, media literacy is mostly “what is the media not telling me?” while in the US, media literacy is mostly “which media source is telling me the right thing?”
The privatization of US media means you can pay someone to tell you whatever you like. So you can get your own heavily polarized view of world events to reinforce your biases and cement your neuroses. But if we’re talking reliability? Idk, man. Is CNN really more reliable than FOX or MSNBC because its “centrist” or does it just have a different set of sponsors?
The Chinese state media gives you the party line, which is fixated on whatever the Chinese state government considers the highest priority. Chinese social media is still rife with rumor and innuendo and agitprop. Its just not as slickly delivered or authoritatively presented as American corporate sponsored infotainment. Harder to sell people on Migrant Fentayl Caravan Killed 50 Israeli Babies when its just some Fwds From Grandma email, rather than a baby-faced news anchor delivering it on a professional set.
These institutions have two very different goals. Chinese media exists to sooth, while American media exists to agitate. But the theory that one of them tells only truths and the other tells only lies hinges on the theory that any of them have a vested interest in doing real journalism.