...shouldn't be teaching.

Was reading something on shanghaist about Edwin Maher. In the article there is an excerpt from the LA Times. Truly pathetic.

He was hired in 2003 as the station introduced a Western face to shake its image as a stodgy government mouthpiece, famous among foreigners for its wooden presentations and sometimes-tortured English. Maher anchors the news up to four times a day for millions of viewers worldwide, including the U.S. Critics say Maher isn't a reporter at all, but a shameless government yes-man who gives all Western journalists a bad name. Maher answers bluntly: He says he simply doesn't care...

Al Jazeera has a team of English-speaking reporters from 45 nations, recruited from many of the globe's major networks. In diversifying its news reports, CCTV officials say they hope their foreign reporters will help provide a more credible Chinese perspective on world affairs. Media experts call the move a public relations ploy.

"It sounds like an effort to lend a whiff of Western-style credibility to their news operations, in a superficial way, without having to actually adhere to high standards such as fairness, independence, balance, public service and accuracy," said Neil Henry, a UC Berkeley School of Journalism professor.

"But a propagandist is a propagandist, no matter what one's race or country of origin."

Maher hears from his critics -- from irate e-mail writers to the foreigners he meets. "One writer said there was no excuse for what I was doing. And Westerners on the street will ask how I feel about being a mouthpiece for the Chinese government."

I wonder what this Neil Henry says about Fox, CNN, The Guardian and other Western media outlets known for their complete disregard for "high standards such as fairness, independence, balance, public service and accuracy" ?

And this guy is a professor ?

Probably the same thing. UC Berkeley's School of Journalism is likeley a theory-based program (much like most research universities) which means they are conservative in defining HOW journalism SHOULD BE rather than how journalism IS in real life. That's what you get from a research university, people who think they know a lot by being well read but may not have the EQ to really try it out. As they say, some do and others teach .

(editted for mass typo)

Journalism was my major at uni too, and they did go into media bias, objectivity/subjectivity etc quite a bit, and generally state-controlled media organizations get the worst of the criticism. Though obviously any news media has bias, be it due to its ownership, the journalist having his or her own personal bias, or what have you. Last time I was in Australia, hearing the news on China, I couldn't believe what a bunch of lies I was hearing. Still, I have a friend who works for Dragon TV in Shanghai, he appears on CCTV9 too, he says everything is screened first, obviously, and often they're simply handed a script to read out, and do so under the guise of it being their own researched story. It's more a question of to what degree the subjectivity exists, I guess.