When Xinhua news agency wanted to upgrade from its old office in New York, it sought out a space that matched its ambitions.
So it leased the top floor of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, one with commanding views of the headquarters for Thomson Reuters, the News Corp, the New York Times and other leading news organizations that have offices nearby.
Last week in its own official account of the “opening ceremony” — this was no mere relocation, it was an arrival — the agency said that its location gave it “a spectacular spot in this center stage of world-class media.”
Xinhua proudly paraded curious reporters, most of them Chinese, through its new North American headquarters, regaling them with facts that illustrated its reach.
The agency has been reporting from New York for 40 years and now employs 41 people in the city. In North America, it has have bureaus in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver, to name a few.
A slideshow playing on a large screen mounted on the wall of the airy office reception area ticked off milestones. 1971: UN bureau opens. 1985: Cairo and Mexico City. 2004: Brussels.
“It’s just like Thomson Reuters or Bloomberg,” said the tour guide, Ariel Lei Yang, Xinhua’s director for television operation.
Except that Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg do not answer to the Chinese Communist Party.
Xinhua is trying to convince the world that it is more than a propaganda arm of the Chinese government, but it is finding that message a tough sell.
Taking questions from reporters, Xinhua’s vice president Zhou Xisheng (周錫生) was asked twice whether the news agency could ever be objective as an arm of the government.
“I believe there is some misunderstanding,” Zhou said, delivering such a lengthy answer that his English-speaking interpreter was unable to keep up.
“Of course we will need to report what’s happening and give it our own explanation. I don’t think that’s propaganda,” he said.
“If you find in our reporting mistakes such as saying white is black, then you have the right to criticize us. I think our reporting is really reliable,” he added.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS