Falun Dafa Association of Canada Requests CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) to Correct the Damage Done by Repeating the Slanderous News on Media in China
(Clearwisdom.net)
On December 31, 2003, CBC aired a report repeating a piece of news in which
the media slandered Falun Gong. Falun Dafa Association of Canada wrote a letter
requesting them to correct the damage.
The letter follows: Sincerely,
Re: Urgent request to correct damage done by CBC
On Wednesday December 31, 2003, CBC aired a report repeating a Chinese
government claim that a Falun Gong practitioner was sentenced to death for
killing beggars with rat poison in order to improve his spiritual strength. The
Falun Dafa Association of Canada is devastated that CBC would irresponsibly link
us with a mass killer and broadcast this nation wide to cause us potential
discrimination and escalated persecution. This repercussion to our cause is
nothing less than devastating and we are asking to meet with CBC executives and
editors to discuss the seriousness of this situation and timely rectification.
We understand that media and broadcast media in particular have an obligation to
be fair, accurate, thorough, comprehensive and balanced in their presentation of
information. However, this murder case in question is
an unsubstantiated report, which was investigated by an international
investigation team and found highly contradictory more than two months ago.
Also, the CBC aired this report without interviewing a single Falun Gong
representative or conducting any investigation into whether the Chinese regime's
claims were factually based.
Moreover, for the past four years the Chinese regime has waged a documented and
deadly persecution against Falun Gong. The same regime CNN reported as saying,
"if we don't eliminate Falun Gong soon it will be seen as a major weakness
to the Communist Party." The same regime whose claims Amnesty
International, government bodies and world media have reported as,
"bogus" "questionable," "alarming",
"unproven," "hate incitement" and a "massive propaganda
campaign," that is being used to brainwash the public into hating
Falun Gong and to hide the regimes atrocities. This same regime that is
responsible for thousands of deaths of Falun Gong practitioners and has actively
spread hate materials against Falun Gong to our media and government officials
here in Canada to try to eliminate support.
The spiritual discipline of Falun Gong has been practiced in communities all
over North America and Europe since 1994 and for 10 years Falun Gong and its
beautiful exercises have been taught to millions of people across the world.
Falun Gong practitioners are proud to be the engineers, doctors, business
persons, housewives, and students etc that contribute to these communities and
strive to bring the principles of Truthfulness Compassion and Tolerance into
society.
During the past two years we have managed to free some of our family members
from torture in China due to the overwhelming support from the world's people.
Government officials and supporters who have helped with the release of our
friends and relatives told us that the most important thing we need to do is to
continue to rally public support and educate them on the Falun Gong issue so
they will continue to sign petitions and write letters.
However, when false reports from the Chinese government created solely to attack
us are echoed in mainstream western media it directly interferes with our
ability to gain public support in order to save people's lives.
We are equally concerned because the Chinese regime will manipulate CBC's
broadcast and report that western media also supports the persecution of Falun
Gong. They will replay your broadcast in China to justify their persecution to
the Chinese people. Also, in airing Chinese government propaganda CBC is sending
the wrong message to the Chinese government on their extreme violations of human
rights against their own citizens.
The campaign to eliminate Falun Gong is very real and the propaganda is the
lifeblood of the persecution. Canadian media should not echo any reports on
Falun Gong that come from the Xinhua or CCTV, their state-run media, as it is a
well-accepted understanding in the West that all claims are manufactured by the
regime's propaganda ministry in China. In echoing these claims they can be
directly aiding in a persecution and tarnishing their own reputation and
integrity.
Last year the CBSC ordered a Canadian TV station, Talentvision, to apologize on
air for airing a very similar story directly from CCTV. They alleged that Falun
Gong lead a man to murder his family. Talentvision was found guilty of four
counts of violating journalistic and broadcast ethics. Today around the world
there are many lawsuits in progress against Chinese newspapers that continued to
defame Falun Gong.
We are asking CBC to meet with us as soon as possible to discuss the seriousness
of this situation, the misrepresentation and damage this report has caused and
how we can peacefully rectify this and make sure that this does not happen
again. We feel this is extremely important not only to help safeguard CBC's
reputation of implementing the highest standards of excellence and integrity in
their reporting, but also to stop the Chinese regime from using our own media to filter hate propaganda into the west and
poison innocent people.
Please contact us as soon as possible.
Falun Dafa Association of Canada
Toronto: Jillian Ye: 416-568-8289; Jason Loftus: 416-391-0915;
Joel
Chipkar: 416-709-8678
Chinese version available at
http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/1/10/64515.html
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