The English language dominates the world, but the English-language media utterly fail to give an accurate picture of what is going on, argues Andre Vltchek

What’s wrong with this picture? Out of the 10 newspapers with the largest circulation in the world, nine are printed in Asia – seven in Japan and two in China, according to the World Association of Newspapers. The world’s most-read newspaper – the Yomiuri Shimbun – has a daily print run of over 14 million copies, while the second-biggest – the Asahi Shimbun – publishes 12.1 million copies in several editions.

The German tabloid Bild is the only Western publication that makes it into the top 10. The circulations of American and British newspapers “of the record” are hardly noticeable – The New York Times comes in at a lowly 37, with a circulation of 1.1 million; while the Los Angeles Times appears at 54, with only 900,000 copies published daily.

Yet English-language periodicals influence and help shape public opinion all over the world. Most people in Santiago de Chile, Lima, Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo who want to learn about Japan or China, must search English-language Web sites or read Spanish or Portuguese translations of articles written in English with an Anglo-American perspective.

Readers across the world are thus influenced by Anglo-Saxon political correctness, Anglo-Saxon perceptions of what is acceptable, democratic, “dictatorial” or “populist.” One is told which political system can be considered “democratic” and which should be simply dismissed as a “regime.” In this part of the world, one learns about Japan, China, India, Thailand or Indonesia from a media system that could easily be described as culturally imperialist.

Japanese, Chinese or Indonesian readers do not fare any better when looking for the latest developments in Africa, Middle East or Latin America. They can find information, but most of their opinions are shaped or influenced by analyses from foreign press agencies, newspaper articles and documentary films produced by American or European companies.

Despite the fact that the mass media in English-speaking countries are aware that they inform the great majority of the world, they are shockingly one-sided. Articles in major newspapers and magazines are predictable, reflecting an increasingly narrow consensus of accepted and acceptable opinions. Dissident voices are audible only from the pages of marginalized publications, an English version of samizdat.

What is disturbing is that voices representing philosophical currents in Asia’s two major powers – China and Japan – are hardly represented on the pages of major Anglo-Saxon publications. And if they are, they are preselected: editors invite Asian writers whose opinions support the mainstream view, or those who are so outrageous and eccentric that they can be labeled as “exceptions that prove the rule” or simply as clowns.

Without being able to read Chinese, for example, it is extremely difficult to find out what the thoughts of Chinese intellectuals on Tibet are.

Clichés created by Anglo-Saxon media and academia are then repeated tirelessly by the main networks, including the BBC and CNN, and by almost all influential dailies. When our media talk about Cambodia, for instance, they rarely forget to mention the genocide of the “Communist” Khmer Rouge. But one would have to search samizdat to find out that the Khmer Rouge came to power only after savage U.S. carpet-bombing of the countryside. And that when Vietnam forced the Khmer Rouge out, the U.S. demanded at the U.N. the “immediate return of the legitimate government”!

There is hardly anything in the online editions of the Western newspapers of record depicting the horrors unleashed by the West against Indochina, Indonesia (2 to 3 million people killed after the U.S. supported a coup that brought General Suharto to power) and East Timor, to mention just a few.

I have never heard of any public figure in the West using the mass media to call for the boycott of anything Indonesian because of the continuous killing of Papuans (just as few seemed to be outraged in the 1970s and ’80s over genocide in East Timor). Tibet is quite a different matter. Criticism of China over its policy toward Tibet is epic. Criticism of China in general is monumental and disproportionate.

Whenever China fails, it is because “it is still Communist;” when it succeeds, “It is not Communist anymore.” As a reader, I want to hear from Chinese people whether their country is Communist or not. From what I heard, it still is and, moreover, the great majority still wants it to be.

But that’s not good enough: the planet’s oldest major culture cannot be trusted to describe itself: the job has to be done by English native speakers, by the only people selected or chosen to influence and shape world public opinion.

I want to hear from my colleagues in Beijing. I want them to be able to argue openly with those who hold their country responsible (absurdly) for everything from Sudan to Burma to the ruined environment. How many reports have we seen on BBC World depicting Chinese factories belching black smoke, and how many have we seen on the pollution created by the U.S. – still the greatest polluter on earth?

Or what are the thoughts of Japanese scholars, writers and journalists on the Second World War? We all know what English-speaking journalists based in Tokyo believe their Japanese colleagues are thinking, but why are we habitually prevented from reading direct translations of works written by those who are filling the pages of some of the largest newspapers on earth, published in Japan and China? Why do we have to be guided by a wise invisible hand that forms the global consensus?

Being fluent in Spanish, I realize how little of the current trends in Latin America are fairly represented in U.S., British and Asian publications. My Latin American colleagues often complain that it is almost impossible to discuss Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez or Bolivian President Evo Morales in London or New York with those who do not read Spanish – their opinions appear to be uniform and frustratingly biased.

Of course, there are writers like Maria Vargas Llosa who are allowed to, even invited by, English-language newspapers to write on current affairs in Latin America. But for decades he has represented the voice of the elites and since losing his bid for the Peruvian presidency to Alberto Fujimori in 1990, he is profoundly hostile to any social or political movement on the left.

These days the left is of course the main topic – the real issue in Latin America. While British and North American journalists and writers are analyzing recent Latin American revolutions in accordance with the political guidelines of their own publications, readers all over the world (unless they understand Spanish) know close to nothing about the opinions of those who are at this very moment making history in Venezuela or Bolivia.

How often does it appear on the pages of our publications that Chavez introduced direct democracy, allowing people to influence the future of their country through countless referendums while the citizens of our “real democracies” have to shut up and do what they’re told? Germans were not allowed to vote on whether they wanted unification; Czechs and Slovaks were not asked whether they wanted their “Velvet Divorce;” British, Italian and U.S. citizens had to put on boots and march to Iraq.

English-language newspapers are full of stories about China without Chinese people being allowed to speak for themselves. They are also full of stories about Japan, where Japanese people are being quoted but not trusted to share their full articles about their own country – pieces that would be written by them from beginning to end.

For now, the English language is the main tool of communication in the world, but not forever. Its writers, journalists, newspapers and publishing houses are not facilitating better understanding between nations. They are completely failing to promote a diversity of ideas.

Media outlets use English as a tool that serves political, economic, even intellectual interests. A growing number of non-native speakers are forced to use English in order to be part of the only group that has influence; the group that matters – the group that reads, understands and thinks the “right” way. On top of spelling and grammar, newcomers to this group learn how to feel and react to the world around them, as well as what they should consider objective. The result is uniformity and intellectual discipline.

Japan may have the biggest newspapers in the world, but they have no influence beyond these islands. On top of that, the way the majority of Japanese perceive the world (including Japan itself) is now being shaped in editorial rooms far away from Tokyo. ❶