Western media need to report truth about island

When Lee Tung-hsien, a Taekwondo athlete from the Taiwan island, won bronze at this year's Asia-Pacific Masters Games on May 14, he proudly held the five-star red flag.

On May 17, representatives of several major parties from Taiwan attended the 10th Dajiang Forum in Beijing and expressed their dream of reunification with the motherland.

On May 9, Kuo Jeng-liang, a former member of the island's "legislative yuan", said local Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party were so close to the United States that they might as well address the US as "daddy".

Many more such voices in the island have called for national reunification while slamming Tsai and the DPP. Yet Western media outlets black out these voices, reporting only calls for "independence", as if Tsai alone represents the island.

She does not. There are 23 million residents on the island and as is apparent from the voices mentioned above the call for national reunification enjoys considerable support. Therefore, it is unprofessional of certain Western media outlets and politicians to quote just Tsai and the DPP to magnify reports of people calling for "independence".

It is a common trick of certain Western media outlets to selectively report incidents. Taiwan is just one such example. When they write about the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, instead of going there and talking to any of the 26 million residents, they choose instead to cite lies fabricated by ill-intentioned scholars and call them the real voice of Xinjiang.

And when some of them do visit Xinjiang, they edit their "documentaries" in such a manner that they end up promoting their propaganda. They surely need to go back to journalism school to learn the basics. Or start by telling the truth about Taiwan.