Category Archives: Xiao Lyu

Media coverage of ISIS stokes fear

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By XIAO LYU

Terrorists live among us? According to CBS12, U.S. National Security officials said there are more than 900 active ISIS investigations in 50 states — including Florida. After the terrorist incident happened last week, news coverage was full of  ISIS’ s recent status, they said that they were in South Florid, in the Washington, D.C., in the Massachusetts.

“They are amongst us. Believe me, they are amongst us here in South Florida,” Chad Jenkins told CBS12. Jenkins is a former counterterrorism agent with the FBI and a former US Army Ranger who served in Iraq. He also said that the reason terrorists chose South Florida were the weather and international makeup.

Moreover, Emily Miller, the chief investigative reporter for Washington, D.C.’s Fox 5 publicized an internal police document about the Metro Transit Police Department (MTPD) seeking information on four men who appear to be Middle Eastern engaged in “suspicious activity” on D.C.’s rapid transit system on Nov. 18.

The news quickly spread and is drawn attention on internet about danger in the Washington, D.C., area. After then, the Metro Transit Police proved the police just did a routine check and the news sparked unnecessary concerns about danger.

“The kind of document is shared internally with law enforcement every day and that doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything of concern for the public and caution any reporter that the individuals here are not suspected of any criminal activity,” said Dan Stessel, chief spokesman for Washington’s Metro Transit Police.

The latest news from CNN said that new ISIS video warns of attack on United States and makes threats against New York. Mayor Bill de Blasio responded promptly that NYPD was prepared to respond to up to 24 incidents simultaneously and the people will not live in the fear. However, social media spread the attack and raised fear about an Islamist terror attack in D.C. and New York, and even made derogatory comments about Syrian refugees.

Stoking fear is the goal of terrorist organizations, however, some media coverage just abet it.

‘Baby Hitler’ goes viral on social media

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By XIAO LYU

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said if he had the opportunity to kill Adolf Hitler when the German autocrat was an infant, he would. The White House later tweeted the article featuring his answer with a comment, “Gotta do it.”

In an interview with the Huffington Post series that covers the campaign trail with the candidates running for president, this former Florida governor’s responded “Hell yeah, I would!” to the question: if given the opportunity, would you go back in time to kill baby Adolf Hitler?

“The problem with going back in history and doing that, as we know from the series — what’s the name of the Michael Fox movies? It could have a dangerous effect on everything else. But I’d do it, Hitler,”said Bush.

This odd question was picked via the e-mail address that Bush distributes widely to public audiences, and in fact, it had already become a controversial question when The New York Times Magazine ran a poll over the weekend last month asking readers if they would go back in time and kill baby Hitler. The result showed that 42 percent of respondents said they would, 30 percent said they would not and the left respondents were not sure about it.

The response on social media to Bush’s comments and The New York Times Magazine went viral. Most of them were comical, but it is still a sensitive question involved an adult kill an infant. Therefore, on Wednesday, when Ben Carson was asked the similar question, but there was a slight difference. The question was whether or not he would “abort” a baby Hitler and he responded that he was not in favor of aborting anybody.

In that case, whatever the respond to that question is, it will lead a new roar on the internet.

An arduous Korea-Japan summit

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By XIAO LYU

South Korea President Park Geun-hye and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the first high-level meeting in Seoul on Monday. The meeting was postponed for more than three years because of historical issues and territorial disputes between two nations.

Before this one-and-one-half hours meeting were the months of diplomatic negotiations. However, they produced no breakthrough. South Korean KBS reported that Korea-Japan summit mainly discussed the issue of so-called comfort women — tens of thousands of Korean and other Asian women sent to work at front-line brothels for Japan’s World War II military. Park asked Japan to give a sincerely apologize and compensate the comfort women before they left the world, while Abe claimed that all the problems from Japan’s often brutal colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945 have been resolved in Treaty on Basic Relations Between Korean and Japan in 1965.

According to the Japanese reports, Abe told Japanese reporters that he agreed to try to find an “early solution” to the subject of comfort women. He said he did not want to “leave an obstacle for the future generations in building” relations with South Korea.

The news has triggered uproar among the social media in Japan and Korean. One of the interesting topics is the summit didn’t prepare a luncheon for Abe, so Abe and the Japanese ambassador went to eat barbecue in Seoul themselves.

Sankei Shimbun reports that, according to the shop, Abe ordered Korean beef tenderloin and spiced pork. The lunch also lasted one and a half hours and Abe finished all of his meal. Many Japanese netizens expressed their dissatisfaction with Park Geun-hye. They criticized Park Geun-hye, saying the leader had no common sense.

The meeting was a chance for both Park and Abe to save face, but both were in an awkward position. It is still unknown if the two countries can possibly reach a final agreement.

Joe Biden and CBS’ ’60 Minutes’

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By XIAO LYU

Vice President Joe Biden made an announcement last week that he will not seek the 2016 nomination of the Democratic Party for president. Although it ended the subject about whether he will step back or not, the speculation of the reason came as follow.

On Sunday, Vice President Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, appeared on CBS “60 Minutes,” telling about the reason he decided not to seek the nomination: the impact of the loss of his son, Beau, and his views on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

The vice president said in the interview that he knew he couldn’t win because he thought he and his staff couldn’t put together the campaign that their supporters deserved and contributors deserved. He also explained the reason — “the single most important thing in deciding not to run” is the loss of his son, Beau. The loss overturned the schedules.

Beau Biden supported Joe Biden to run for the president and thought he could win, while Maureen Dowd in The New York Times wrote about it and described Beau on his death bed said to his father, ”Dad, you’ve got to run.” This description was proved false in the interview.

Biden also discussed his comments reported by The New York Times last week that he didn’t mean to aim at Hillary Clinton herself and that they are friends.

“Go back and find anybody who says, for the four years we worked together, Hillary and I weren’t friends,” Biden said.

Moreover, Biden addressed his disappointment with Donald Trump directly and called him a showman. He wanted Trump to reconsider his remarks on immigrants.

CNN, NBC, The New York Times and many mainstream media covered this interview and they put particular emphasis on a different aspect of the story. CNN mostly covered “no Hollywood Moment” and the headline from NBC referred to Biden’s comment that he couldn’t win. The New York Times, which was mentioned twice in the interview, tells more about his family concerns. However, none of them made a comment about Biden’s disappointment with Trump.

Canada gets a ‘good-looking PM’

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By XIAO LYU

Justin Trudeau, 43-year-old political leader, makes his way to the stage at Liberal party headquarters in Montreal on Monday, Oct. 19, after winning the 42nd Canadian general election. As the elder son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau has a handsome looking and great enthusiasm is sports. He is called by foreign media as the “sexiest leader in the world.”

“Canada’s Good Looking PM” has become a heated discussion, and Justin Trudeau and his government even built a Chinese micro blog account for Chinese Internet users. It is one of the most searched topic in micro blogs and has more than 60.000 followers.

Justin Trudeau and his government updated their campaign and their election platform such as Justin Trudeau promised to respond to Canada’s economic slowdown by running modest deficits and building infrastructure. He has refused to raise Canada’s corporate tax rate. He has been noncommittal on the new trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and he has promised, vaguely, that Canada will have a more progressive climate change policy.

According to CBC News, messages of congratulations to Justin Trudeau are coming in from world leaders. Reuters reported Tuesday that The White House congratulated Trudeau on his win.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi offered a warm welcome on Twitter, “Looking forward to seeing you at G20,” and other welcoming tweets came from India, Mexican Malaysia and The Maldives.

Although the Canadian media coverage says that the liberal win trends worldwide, many U.S. coverage may prefer to conclude that the winning of Justin Trudeau is “low expectation and high relief.” The victory denied a fourth term to Harper and his Conservative party, and people would like to see him clean up the mess at this term.

Media coverage on Flight 17 crash

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By XIAO LYU

The crash of Malaysia Flight 17 was caused by a missile warhead, according to the Dutch Safety Board’s report on Tuesday.

Flight MH17 crashed in Eastern Ukraine in July 2014. Everyone on board was dead. Distressingly, many aviation accidents and incidents took place in 2014. They range from the missing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to Malaysia Flight 17, from Algerian Air Force C-130 crash to TransAsia Airways Flight 222.

News media produced much coverage of those aviation accidents. They were filled with stories analyzing the facts and evidence of the crash. However, many of them were reckless and speculations, because they jumped to all sorts of conclusion without any interviews or data to support their theory. Such analysis is nothing less than the weather issues,  man-made causes,  terrorist attacks,  or aircraft malfunction. It now appears that the interpretation of lost of the Malaysia Airlines MH 370 was absurd. Almost every media covered the cause which is the disintegration in the air. CNN dedicated 100 percent of its coverage to flight 370,  even inviting a psychologist to talk about the possible causes of the crash. Later CNN theorized on their network’s website involving the highly unlikely scenario that the plane landed on a remote island in the Indian Ocean.

U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the world’s most professional air accident investigation agency, but it should takes several months or even several years for them to complete the analysis. Therefore, reporters can’t make their conclusions recklessly.

In fact, most of the press did not show its responsibilities and the respect for the victims and their families. On the contrary, journalists made a fuss, creating the tense atmosphere. Also, they accused and shirked responsibility, misguiding the emotions and views of the publics and gradually became a conspiracy theory and led to the political debate.

During the investigation, the news we heard about was Russia and Ukraine accusing each other of causing the incident. As the Dutch Safety Board’s report was released, another round of uproar was set off. Russian national television is questioning the report — it showed that Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov echoed these denials on Tuesday, calling the Dutch report an “obvious attempt to draw biased conclusions,” according to the country’s state-run news agencies. “Russian Today” television released a short video, displaying a test involved detonating a BUK missile near the nose of an aircraft similar to a Boeing 777. It seems that the truth remains a mystery, especially under the media hype.

The responsibility of the press is to debunk myths and rumors, not to opine on events and make speculation from sources for capturing eyeballs, enhancing ratings, and boosting advertising revenue.

NASA did big favor for ‘The Martian’

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By XIAO LYU

NASA scientists held a news conference on Monday said they found the flowing water on the surface of Mars, making a significant breakthrough in searching for new life in the universe. However, with the vast news media attention, the news conference has been considered as a public relations blitz for the movie “The Martian” that opens in theaters nationally today and a chance to generate more money.

Three days prior to the news conference, NASA released a notice for the news conference on its official website, inviting the media and the public to participate. It was conventional when NASA was going to release a major scientific discovery and it would effectively become a spotlight.

During this time, the information was widely disseminated via the Internet and large-scale professional media coverage. The brief news conference notice of Mars grew into a spontaneous communication of science, all kinds of knowledge about Mars gathered around the Internet and the news media, arousing wide public concern.

NASA always attached great importance to the popularization of its work. NASA publicists build science website for each project, set up scientific periodical team, invited the public to participate in activities. It was interpreted as NASA was trying to allocate more money to Mars. President Obama said in 2010 that he would increase NASA spending by $6 billion over five years and finish designing a heavy-lift launch vehicle by 2015. But NASA’s current $18 billion annual budget is dispersed widely across scientific priorities, with the program receiving less than $500 million.

Another thing that was able to sustain public excitement was “Mars Mystery Solved” coordinated with the film “The Martian,” and the film is now in theaters. Although NASA has said it was a coincidence, it also was a stroke of immense fortune, given the vast media attention the discovery garnered just days within the opening of a film and the huge audience for the movie. People will be more aware of the agency’s plan to actually put people on Mars.

Martin Shkreli, ‘most-hated man’

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By XIAO LYU

This week, Martin Shkreli, the 32-year old CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York,  has earned the title “most-hated man in America.”

Turing Pharmaceuticals bought a drug called Daraprim, the drug can fight toxoplasmosis, which infects people whose immune systems have been weakened by AIDS.  However, the company raised the price from $13.50 to $750 for one tablet. According to the latest announcement, the increase of price has been rescinded under the pressure of public opinion.

The conflict was rising when presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said on her Twitter account on Monday:  “Price-gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous. Tomorrow I’ll lay out a plan to take it on.”

However, Shkreli has used television interviews and his own social media account to defend  the company and himself.

He told The New York Times earlier, “This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business.”

Recently, in the interview by CNBC, he said that the infection Daraprim is used to treat had been ignored by the pharmaceutical industry because there was little money to be made.  He claimed that the money will be able to educate doctors about the disease, improve delivery to patients, and develop better drugs for the infection.

There is no hope for saving his reputation, especially due to his way of responding on Twitter.

He wrote on Twitter on Monday, “It seems like the media immediately points a finger at me so I point one back at ‘em, but not the index or pinkie.”

He also said that Twitter seems to be a great medium for socialist and liberal rage and declared once again the price of drug will be a great thing for society. According to CNN Money, Shkreli was fired when he was the CEO of Retrophin. The reason he was fired, in addition to his poor management skills, was his irritating Twitter usage.

The whole issue is causing biotechnology stocks to fall across the board, involving the lively attention of the government, politicians, the healthcare field, and the financial industry. At the same time, the explosion of social media and TV networks have also made it a hot topic around the world.

Brazilian superfan dies at age 60

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By XIAO LYU

According to the Brazilian media Gaucha, on Sept. 16, the world’s most famous fan in football, Clovis Acosta Fernandes has passed away at the age of 60.

His name may not sound familiar to you, perhaps you may wonder who is this “famous fan”? But if you are a fan of the Brazilian national team, you would notice on TV or in an online photograph the face of an old Brazilian World Cup fan with a white beard wearing a bowler hat, even carrying his replica trophy in the bleachers.

Fernandes gained further popularity in the last year’s World Cup. When he saw Brazil collapsed to a 7-1 semi-final defeat to Germany, the image of him clinging on to his replica trophy with tears in his eyes drew many attention from international news media. It later emerged that Fernandes had passed his replica trophy on to a German fan, apparently telling her to “… take it to the final. As you can see, it is not easy, but you deserve it, congratulations.” The photograph immediately exploded on social media and Fernandes became something of a celebrity.

Fernandez had followed the Brazilian national team to more than 60 countries. He watched more than 150 tournaments of the Brazilian team and made sure his face and his trophy were on camera at every World Cup since 1990.  He witnessed his beloved team become champions twice. People call him the “Brazil’s 12th player.”

Sadly, he was diagnosed with cancer nine years ago and was taken away by the disease on Wednesday. He was known to be a friendly man and he liked to be interactive, such as share his selfies and pictures with his fans via his Twitter account.

FIFA made a tribute via Instagram on Wednesday saying: “…Innumerable fans snapped selfies with the good-natured Gaúcho during Brazil 2014, while the sight of him crying during the Seleção’s semi-final defeat was one of the most iconic images of the tournament. We’ll miss you, Clóvis.”

Many fans from all around the world are still leaving messages under FIFA’s tribute, and tweets are currently circulating on Twitter to his well known account @Gauchodacopa. They talked about his background story and expressed condolences through the social media. This time, social media play the role of disseminating the story and uniting people through remembrance.

3,200 rescuers diagnosed with cancer

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By XIAO LYU

Nick Schiralli barely escaped death 14 years ago because he was late for work that day. Astoundingly, 14 years later, the 68-year-old is suffering from a disease after inhaling 9/11 fumes.

The latest official data show that more than 3,200 cops, firefighters and New York City workers have been diagnosed with cancer. The number is still rising and the residents are excluded from this number. After the disaster, it still hasn’t stopped taking away innocent lives.

On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after 9/11 took place, President George W. Bush and the New York government were eager to prove that they had not been overtaken by the terrorists. They issued a notice to the public that everything was under control and would return to normal soon. In order to appease and persuade the public, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Safety and Health Commission and the other departments endorsed “the air is safe to breathe; the water is safe to drink.”

Questioning usually comes after the rescuing. But after the 9/11 attacks, the American media and public opinion, who ordinarily criticize the government, became silent. A large number of television programs promoted the dedication and patriotism of the government, police, and the military, and rarely had a questioning voice.

Juan Gonzalez was the famous senior reporter, who dared to challenge the authority, but his questioning did not get much response. The environmental protection departments published data showing the air was “ within the security metrics” to stop criticism, but then people became affected and the public began to question: What is that irritating smell in the air? What is the substance that makes the fire continue to burn? Are there any toxic substances? However, the data released by the US government was still showing a safe and clear air quality and in order to prevent more questions from the press, the Environmental Protection Agency held an undisclosed press conference.

9/11 has always been a sensitive topic, but the fact is, the number of victims are still rising. In recent years, most of the mainstream media began to report the related issues and to pressure the government: the government should give an impartial explanation to the heroes and the victims of  9/11.