Liberal business outlets elevating Chinese state media’s attack on the U.S. over the data-harvesting Chinese app TikTok is a disgusting example of their anti-American bent.
CNBC and Bloomberg News both ran stories giving a platform to Chinese state media seething at the U.S.’s “Smash and Grab” of TikTok. Big Tech company Microsoft is currently in talks to purchase ownership of the app. CNBC’s story was headlined, “Chinese state media slams U.S. as a ‘rogue country’ for its planned ‘smash and grab’ of TikTok.” Bloomberg News’s story was headlined, “China Won’t Allow a TikTok ‘Smash and Grab’ by U.S., State Media Warns.” Bloomberg News has since changed that headline, which it apparently is routinely in the habit of doing: “China Brands Trump’s Demands on TikTok Sale a ‘Smash and Grab.’”
Both articles were laced with commentary from publications like The China Daily and a tabloid (The Global Times) published by The People’s Daily. These were designated to be treated as an “arm of Beijing’s government” by the U.S. State Department in February, according to CNN. [Emphasis added.]
A senior State Department official said, as summarized by CNN, that “the outlets are owned and effectively controlled by the government in Beijing.” Apparently, CNBC and Bloomberg News didn’t consider providing a platform for communist Chinese propaganda to lash out at the U.S. too much of an issue.
CNBC pushed a tweet by Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, who spewed that “This is an open robbery. The world is watching and God is watching that how President Trump is turning the once great America into a rogue country.” [Emphasis added.]
Also citing Xijin, Bloomberg News framed his attack this way:
Trump repeatedly insisted on Monday that any sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations would have to include a substantial payment to the U.S. That was ‘open robbery,’ tweeted Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a tabloid run by the party’s People’s Daily newspaper.
Both outlets pushed state-backed China Daily’s retaliatory threat that China “has plenty of ways to respond if the administration carries out its planned smash and grab.”
CNBC also pushed how “Global Times ran a headline that read: ‘Banning TikTok reflects Washington’s cowardice,’” under a sub-section actually headlined “'Cowardice.'”
Bloomberg News’s lede paragraph read like the outlet was running propaganda for China itself:
China’s state-run media has struck back in the war over TikTok, branding U.S. demands for the sale of the social media app’s American operations to Microsoft Corp. as ‘theft’ and suggesting Beijing may block the transaction, [emphasis added].
Bloomberg News’s shilling continued. It even editorialized without quotes or citation that “The U.S. crackdown has split many in the industry: Some decry the betrayal of values like free speech and capitalism, while others advocate doing whatever it takes to subdue a geopolitical rival and its pivotal tech industry.”
Contact CNBC at 201-735-2622 and Bloomberg News at letters@bloomberg.net and demand they stop shilling for the Chinese government and giving its communist-run media a platform!
