Tory pundit’s take on CBC’s Falun Gong doc
You’ve got to admire the great illustration Tory pundit Stephen Taylor did to note the recent controversy surrounding a planned airing of a documentary about Falun Gong.
You can see the full illustration here.
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No I don’t. All Taylor did was 5 minutes worth of photoshop. Go here…
http://iisg.nl/~landsberger/
to see some real artists.
I used an old Chinese communist poster as the base of my composition. The ‘real’ artist of the propaganda was probably subsequently killed by Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”.
I simply selected the artwork, added the (modified) CBC logo and slapped on a funny caption.
I think Jesse needs a hug.
Mr Taylor, I believe CBC did the right thing by pulling and reviewing the accuracy of the documentary.
For example are you aware of the fact Falun Gong’s “organ” allegation David Kilgour is promoting, has been discredited by multiple undercover investigations?
Here are US government and Chinese dissident investigations disproving it:
Link 1a | PDF Link 1b (section CRS-7)
Link 2a | Link 2b
I don’t think it’s always about how much technical effort goes into a piece but rather how well it makes its point. I think Stephen’s bit of photoshopping goes a long way in making his point and in that sense it’s well done.
+1 on a hug for Jesse
Charles, of course I don’t know what’s really going on in China.
However, I do know that it took just one phone call from the Chinese embassy to get the CBC to pull a documentary to “re balance” it at the request of one of the subjects in the documentary (ie. the Chinese government). This hardly speaks to the independence of the CBC from third parties regarding the manipulation of its news content.
If we assume that the CBC and its editors and producers do their due diligence in fact checking content for accuracy, how come it was an 11th hour call from the Chinese government that made the CBC realize the “errors” that it had made?
To play devil’s advocate, because while the fact checking may have been as accurate as possible in March, new information may have come to light in the interim? (Note that this is my happy-clappy optimist opinion, not my default cynical one. But even my cynical one basically says ‘screwup’ rather than ‘conspiracy to censor’.)
On the subject at hand, it’s the little red pencil that makes the ‘shoppery almost genius. I wish the logo had been warped to fit the cover better but what can you do.
For example Falun Gong’s use of gory medical artifacts was only recently brought to light by a physician blogger in India:
Dr. Ramana noticed the photo used in Falun Gong’s “sexual torture” story is in reality photo of breast cancer.
But of course, when community activists like myself try to speak up against these fabrication, we are labeled “Chinese spy”.
Mr Taylor, CBC’s VP Stursberg just came out and said the film got pulled due to inaccuracy and questionable claims.
Here’s another questionable claim made in the film – the fundamental flaw in Falun Gong’s claim is the fact disciples are not put to death.
Here’s an article that speaks to the fact western anti-cult experts were consulted in the Chinese government’s effort on deprogamming Falun Gong disciples.
Rather, FLG disciples who break the law are sent to deprogramming centers via custodial detention (also known as Laogai).
Is coercive deprogramming torture? That’s debatable IMHO, but what is true is they are only dead in the sense the sect loses hold on these people after deprogramming.
There are probably cases of abuse contrary to stated law, but if there’s no death camp, then there exists a very different reality than what’s alleged.