A highly-respected US scholar once told me that the Western media is founded on the spirit of challenging authorities and it is the media's job to be cynical, vigilant, critical, defiant and negative.



I am a strong believer of the fundamental principles on which the US political system is founded. Besides many merits of the system, media stands out as an indispensable component designed to supervise, on behalf of the public, the three branches of the federal government. This is almost a perfect setup except three potential flaws - firstly, there is no mechanism in place for the supervision of the media itself; secondly, there are serious conflicts of interests between the two contradictory roles of media both as a representative of public interests and, at the same time, as self-serving profit-making enterprises; and thirdly founding media on the basis of cynicism and negativity has its own social costs.

For media to fulfill its role to supervise the government, it needs to serve public interests, rather than its own interests. It needs to be unbiased, objective and independent.

Nonetheless, it is well-known that the mainstream Western media has long blended its role for public welfare with relentless pursuit of ego, power and profits. As the world enters the information age, the mainstream Western media has become a new rising superpower with ever-increasing influence on domestic and international politics, economy, social structure, value systems and people's everyday life.

Does Americans really have as much freedom as the mainstream media would like us to believe? As the mainstream Western media pursue freedoms in other countries, Americans are losing so many freedoms that once made them so proud.

In the past few decades, America has experienced a string of serious challenges and setbacks including the breakdown of family/social structure and value systems, falling religious influence and freedom, popular abuse and dependence of narcotics and prescription drugs, rising violence across the country, escalating racial tension and police brutality, widening gap between the rich and the poor, dropping standard of literacy and basic education, failing healthcare system that denies coverage of 23 million Americans, and a tendency of resolving international disputes with "regime change" by military force rather than diplomacy, violations of on constitutional civil and human rights under the cover of anti-terrorism, to name just a few.

Our children can no longer walk to the school bus by themselves for fear of drug pushers and child snatchers on the way. By the time they arrive in their schools, metal detectors await for them in some inner city schools. They have to leave their bags in lockers and no colored drinks are allowed for fear of bombs. Their teachers are not allowed to mention any religion or teach morals in schools. Even "Christmas trees" must not be called "Christmas trees" but "family trees". They have to go through evacuation drills often to remain vigilant because school shootings are spreading. Now people are even more scared because a school district in Texas took the lead to allow teachers carrying guns to the classroom. But can we trust the teachers? Do we have to outsource our teachers from India or China one day?

As an American citizen, nothing is more valuable than my voting right. But even that has depreciated. Why? Because the mainstream media is not doing its job of dissemination of objective information. Instead it confuses me with a constant stream of selectively edited, distorted and manipulated information in order to advance its own preferences, agendas and commercial interests.

Let's take a look at the tainted media pictures of presidential candidates. John Edwards is a wife cheater, but that has been kept from the public until now; Hilliary is a liar who believes she is entitled to be the President and her husband Bill is hostile to the mainstream press; John McCain is a patriot but a war monger who knows nothing about economy; and finally Obama, alas, is actually a celebrity, radical of racial politics, Muslim (not that there is anything wrong with it) and "Anti-Christ"! For God's sake, stop harassing me with all this sensational talk designed to boost ratings and I want to vote for Paris Hilton, but unfortunately she is not on the ballot. So my pathetic one vote looks quite useless, well, at least for now.

Moving back to topic of Beijing Olympics. A Western journalist was quick to point out his disagreement with the slogan, "One World One Dream", which is meant by the host nation to stress the commonalities all peoples share. Nevertheless, this reporter chose to emphasize the different values he has from the Chinese host.

Fine, let's talk about the differences. If the mainstream Western media can acknowledge that peoples on this earth are different and that there are vast differences between them in the geographic landscapes, population structures, social-economic hierarchy, cultural values, beliefs, religions and ideologies, it should not be difficult to appreciate that their political, legal and media systems also need to differ from each other to accommodate for the specific needs of each country. It is dangerous to assume the systems of the West are somehow superior which can be transplanted to other countries.

Does China need a Western-style media system? I doubt it. While fundamental Western media principles of cynicism, defiance, negativity and confrontation may or may not work well in the Western cultures, they most-definitely will not be successful in the Chinese cultural environment which values hierarchy, harmony, benevolence and tolerance among people.

However, it is the Chinese people who should decide eventually what political, economic and media systems are the ones they need. I have faith that with five thousand years of civilization, China has the wisdom to draw from the strengths of the West, avoid its fundamental flaws and ultimately develop a positive-spirited media system with Chinese characteristics that is built on the basis of upholding public welfare and interests.

Final conclusion

By blemishing a hospitable nation, which worked hard and sacrificed dearly to be a good host, mainstream Western media only exposed the self-interest and ethnocentric facets of itself to the whole world. Such irrational and frantic behaviors will only serve to bolster more media scrutiny by the Chinese government, further alienate the Chinese people and erase any remaining credibility and relevance of the mainstream Western media in the post-Olympic China.

I love the motto of Beijing Olympics - "One World One Dream" - the dream of the Olympic Spirit under which all peoples of the world will be united with mutual understanding, friendship, solidarity, fair play and tolerance to build a peaceful and better world together.