Yesterday, the whole world (including the people of China) went utterly bat-shit because a newborn baby was flushed down a Chinese toilet. Reports told of 'average Joe' calling the mother 'inhuman' and wishing upon her a fate worse than the one she'd intended for her child. Today, however, that very same baby has been 'reunited with its mother' who, apparently, flushed the thing by accident and had no intention whatsoever of disposing of it, even though she was, admittedly, giving birth down the bog out of fear of government reprisals.
In free daily bumwipe, The Metro, the switcheroo in journalistic tone couldn't have been more black-to-white. Yesterday's reportage seemed overtly anti-China (having brought up interior Chinese challenges of the one-child rule). The same paper today didn't even report that, 'Hey, we got it wrong.' It simply told a different, Disneyfied, story of endurance and familial love. Our deference to/faith in authoritative media strengthened precisely by making that deference/faith seem entirely untenable. 'On your marks, get set... HATE. Now LOVE. Now HATE. Now LOVE AGAIN.' What a dumb species we are.
The truth of the matter was forever hidden in the moment of disgarding the child. Of course, there's very likely a heavy dose of post-event Chinese spin here to avoid disruption of the one-child hegemony, but how can we be expected to even give half a toss when all reportage is so heavily fictionalised? They might as well have gone the whole nine yards and turned the baby into a lump of poo instead of reuniting it with its mother. 'The Chinese government today announced that what had at first appeared to be a living, breathing, crying baby in the sewage pipe, was in fact nothing more than a common or garden piece of faeces...' Two words: Mr Hanky.
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