'Hacker school' unfairly portrayed in US media
- Source: Global Times
- [22:09 February 25 2010]
- Comments
Why would Shao, director of the School's computer science department, need "protection" when clarifying matters to the paper? Reporters were obviously hiding their embar-rassment at a lack of inside information.
The article "exposes" that Lanxiang has ties to the Chinese military. The vocational school "was founded in 1984 by a former military officer on land donated by the military," and sends "a large batch of graduates to the army," who then become the army's backbone. It's natural that foreign media doesn't understand China's actual situation.
Many students in China, after passing China's national college entrance examination, go directly to military schools. Why not pry on those well-known schools instead of a barely heard vocational school? Reporters should at least have heard of Bengbu Tank College in Anhui Province.
Since the Google incident, the hacker topic has triggered hot discussions. The US media seems fond of throwing out China topics on hearsay evidence.
Now cyber attack and hackers have become one of their favorite topics.
Earlier there was a rumor saying that Chinese hackers had intruded into the Dalai Lama's office computer. Nevertheless, the Canadian security consulting firm which discovered the "major Chi-nese spying operation" was the Dalai Lama's security consultant.
The VOA once reported with certainty that a "GhostNet spy network" has been found in China, which threatened US security. Such exposure ended up with no conclusive evidence. The Google incident has now concluded in friendly reconciling, making some wonder whether Google hyped the "hacking" incident deliberately.
If the US media doesn't work harder to provide a full and proper background and sources for its stories on China, it will lose its credibility among global readers while Chinese media provides a fairer account.
The author is the chief editor of the Daily Newspaper Reading program on Phoenix TV.
