The truth behind Global Times: China's state-backed media outlet

Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, China’s inability to respond efficiently was being called out across international media outlets. Here’s what home grown and state-backed outlets like the Global Times in China have been reporting.

Headlines protective of China like “Anti-China reports are 'inconsistent with facts’”, “COVID-19 tests in full swing in China”, and the sentiment of China doing enough to contain the outbreak in the country have been rampant in state news outlets.

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Global Times also ran the headlines - “Baseless accusations by foreign media”, “Lessons for India on border peace”. Such coverage suggests a pattern of sharing one-sided information, while other countries have been allotted the role of the attacker.

The outlet - Global Times offers views of the Chinese Communist Party. They will tell you that Beijing has won its fight against the coronavirus, and that rigorous testing is in full-swing.

Where did the whistleblowers go?

However, not once has the this outlet acknowledged the whistleblowers who have gone missing since the outbreak began. Five Wuhan whistleblowers are missing, and one is dead.They tried exposing the truth about the coronavirus, and now there is no trace of them.

Dr Li Wenliang died of coronavirus in February. He tried to warn the world about COVID-19, only to be censored and tortured by the police, as suggested by a new report.

Chinese millionaire Ren Zhiqiang, who criticised the Communist Party's response to the virus, has not been seen since march. The Global Times does not have much to say on this missing real estate tycoon.

There are several others who have gone missing, like journalist Chen Giushi, Fan Bin, and Li Zehua. Shockingly, the reports of their disappearance have also dissipated with them.

Not once has Global Times attempted to report on these missing persons. That’s partly because the outlet is owned by the People's Daily which is the official newspaper of the central committee of the Communist Party of China.

Global Times' editor, Hu Xijin is a party loyalist, who was long ago involved in the Tiananmen Square protests but is now withholding information.

Reporting on enforced disappearances is missing from the tabloid's playbook, as is seeking verified data on COVID-19 deaths, or the role of Wuhan's wet markets, or the Institute of Virology’s involvement.

All this, while the outlet has called out others multiple times, “The New York Times and Washington Post's baseless accusations that there were massive numbers of asymptomatic virus carriers in Wuhan”.