From the Wall Street Journal’s China Journal blog:
China’s Xinhua News Agency is lecturing Western media outlets for ignoring risks, covering up lies, protecting the powerful and clouding the truth.
The context: China’s state news agency says its newsgathering efforts will be an essential pillar in a reordered global financial landscape, since a “monopoly” of Western media shirked their duty to protect the system.
“I will underscore today that the information asymmetry and the non-objective, unfair and one-sided information order as another reason for the financial crisis,” Xinhua Vice President Lu Wei told bankers and policymakers gathered in Shanghai on Saturday (report in Chinese here).
In his spirited presentation, Mr. Lu echoed other conference delegates that the global recession resulted from lax regulators and greedy financiers, and he also laid fresh charges: “Under a situation where news gathering was monopolized, communication power was controlled, risks were hidden, the truth covered-up, market information was disseminated to represent selected groups, falsities clouded investor judgment and brought finance to the abyss,” Mr. Lu said.
