As a result, U.S. foreign policy has been handicapped by a voting and vocal public that has never heard the whole story. To be fair, reporting has been hobbled by Chinese restrictions on foreign journalists wanting to visit Tibet. In the past, only a very few reporters were allowed in, invariably accompanied by officials who followed their every move, preventing them from speaking to ordinary Tibetans. News stories therefore had to be concocted from the hearsay of tourists, many of whom are admirers of the Dalai Lama, and from reports published by the Tibet Information Network, which is strongly anti-Beijing. Weighing in for the Chinese side are nauseating, unbelievable stories put forth by Xinhua and other State news organs stories about former serfs making it big in New China and thanking the Communist Party for their liberation.
Articles are heavy in misleading and false statistics, and riddled with English malapropisms.
Small wonder that journalists are hard put to unearth nuggets of truth from the avalanche of clumsy, politically-motivated rhetoric. It is far easier to dismiss Chinese publications out of hand. Under the Chinese, there are starvation, torture, forced labor and mass murder. Such uncritical acceptance of flawed and biased information has been routine in American newspapers. As president of an NGO that brings foreign aid into Tibet, I have seen how Tibetans are hurt by the information blackout.