By THEPHILBIZNEWS STAFF
Since 2014, or two years since the Panatag Shoal fiasco, Chinese officials have intensified its efforts to offer so-called trainings in trips to China for foreign journalists, primarily from Africa and Asia.
Filipino journalists’ participation in these trips became more frequent after Duterte took power in 2016.
Since January 2019, at least 36 Filipino journalists, editors, or media executives, mostly representing state-owned or government-friendly media outlets, have traveled to China for these “media trainings”.
As a result of these trips, some of the participants produced friendly news reports, interviews, and feature stories, touching on China’s advanced technology, Belt Road Initiative, poverty-eradication efforts, and media expertise.
After a 2019 trip, a reporter from a provincial outlet wrote a piece praising China’s poverty-alleviation initiatives through tourism.
According to the International Federation of Journalists, some journalists from the island of Mindanao, home to the majority of the country’s Muslim population, visited Xinjiang, the Uyghur homeland and location of atrocity crimes against Uyghurs, and then wrote “stories praising China for cracking down on terrorists.”
A former newspaper manager echoed the Chinese communist party’s talking points while recounting his participation in a 10-month training arranged by the China Public Diplomacy Association, which he took part in from 2018 to 2019 while serving as a PCOO officer.
His story was published in both local and international online news.
