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The following was originally published on April 13, 2006. It is being reposted here while other OpEdNews items question how the AP reported on the Ron Paul rally (by reducing the number of attendees and reporting the lower number).
What I have here is a different story that shows mis-reporting by the AP and Reuters, perhaps as they follow their communist masters in Beijing. The AP doesn't just miscount protestors; it miscounts Panchen Lamas! This article also decries AP behavior going back to 1989 as they misreported the death toll in China's Tiananmen Square massacre.
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The meaning of words will be at issue today. Newswires are demonstrating that they form an axis with the Communist masters of Beijing, China, and they are trying to pull a big one over on — you. You, me, and everyone are confronted by an enormous fraud and deception today.
The Roman Catholic church has the Pope. No newswire is questioning whether or not Joseph Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI. He is that.
Tibetan Buddhism has the Panchen Lama. No newswire should be questioning whether or not Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is Panchen Lama XI. He is that.
The arrogance of journalism comes to the fore when some newswires arrogate to themselves the decision making authority over who is a figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The correct arbiter of same should be the Dalai Lama, not Christopher Bodeen of the Associated Press. By the Dalai Lama, we already know that Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is the eleventh Panchen Lama.
Today, I have read an article by Bodeen, and I want him to take that back and apologize. More broadly, I want the AP and Reuters to issue retractions and apologies from both newswires. The Tibetan people are the ones who are the most directly violated by this state of affairs, but I am an American and non-Buddhist, and I want an apology, personally!
Upon explanation, I feel that many of my fellow news readers will agree that what is at hand is profoundly foul and offensive. They need not be Buddhists. Simple, ordinary people with respect will understand that religions are sacred things and should be inviolate. AP and Reuters have crossed a line into sacrilege.
Some of my readers will need no explanation. There are hundreds of groups in the cause to 'Free Tibet,' and they know well about the situation at hand. AP and Reuters will also be getting howls of protest from such people as Students for a Free Tibet; the International Tibet Support Network; the Tibetan Youth Congress; International Tibet Independence Movement; the US Tibet Committee; the Rangzen Alliance; Friends of Tibet; and the International Campaign for Tibet.
Since 1995, it is true (as reported by the China Support Network and many other sources) that "The Panchen Lama has become known as the world's youngest political prisoner." He was abducted at the age of six, and is an international celebrity for two reasons — first, because the Panchen Lama is a major figure in Tibet's Buddhist religion; and second, because Beijing abducted him and an international campaign for his release continues to scream his name and banner his picture.
However, Beijing rejects both the Dalai Lama and his choice of the boy for Panchen Lama. No one in Beijing has the authority to choose a Panchen Lama, but they have gone ahead and selected their own boy so that they can "install" their own, pro-Beijing person to be a regime-friendly, pro-Beijing person.
To kidnap the Panchen Lama was bad enough; per the China Support Network (in an article of 2004), that was "a display of the brazen rape of another people." I wrote then that "Brazen is one word. Flagrant, heinous, and sacrilegious are three more words....his case clearly points out the diabolical nature of China's Communist regime, as it readily violates not just an individual, but a religious figure, and thereby the entire society that cares about the Panchen Lama. Violated and raped are two more words, and Tibet can understandably feel that way."
So, if the kidnapping was bad enough, then words begin to fail now, as we consider (a.) the arrogated selection, by Beijing, of a Panchen Lama impostor; and (b.) the fact that AP and Reuters today are reporting the impostor as if he is actually the Panchen Lama. I believe clearly that this is sacrilege, and that this is foul, faulty, and false reporting that serves only to move along Communist propaganda, while a crime against humanity is committed. Again, I am not Tibetan, and I am not Buddhist, but I can see a religion being violated, and I can see journalists arrogating to themselves something akin to the selection of the Pope.
What if it crossed the news wire that Jacques Chirac does not like the selection of Joseph Ratzinger, and that Chirac appoints Pierre Z'Bumpkin to be the Pope? —Well, the world knows how Popes are selected, and that it occurs in a conclave of Cardinals. So the world should be able to laugh or to shrug off any such impertinency as in the example above.
Right now, the AP and Reuters are hoping that the world is ignorant of how Panchen Lamas are selected. They hope that no one has ever heard of the Dalai Lama. The only problem for the AP and Reuters is that we are not that ignorant. History did not begin yesterday, nor did we fall off of a lemon truck yesterday. (Boy, don't journalists wish? In my lifetime, journalism has gone from "the first draft of history" to "the fictionalization of history.")
Reuters began its article by saying, "Tibet's 11th Panchen Lama, anointed by China's atheist Communists but not by the Tibet's Dalai Lama, took center stage at the World Buddhist Forum on Thursday, defending China's record on religion." (Hmmm. Why would China's record on religion need defending, if Beijing were not offending?)
Reuters continued, "Gyaltsen Norbu, appointed in 1995 as the Himalayan region's second most important religious figure after Beijing rejected the Dalai Lama's nominee...." (Hmmm. Recall from above that the Panchen Lama is named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. The impostor, Gyaltsen Norbu, is being named here. This is enough to make one wonder about Pierre Z'Bumpkin, posited fictionally above as a suggestion for Pope. Do you suppose that AP and Reuters can fill us in about him, too?)
The AP is in on this scam, too. Look at this quote from AP: "Gyaltsen Norbu, 16, is the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism." AP described this appearance as "an apparent sign that Beijing is seeking greater acceptance for its choice of the Panchen Lama." However, we know from earlier that Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was previously reported to be the Panchen Lama. Whether the newswires agree this is sacrilege or not, a vast violation of estoppel it certainly is.
A vast violation of estoppel is a change of story; a reversal; an inconsistency. The AP did the same in 1989, when it reduced the casualty figures from the Tiananmen Square massacre. (Newswires earlier reported 3,000 dead; they later said "hundreds" dead, and CSN believes that change occurred at the behest of the propaganda minister in Beijing.) Beijing cannot make the China Support Network say what it wants, nor report Beijing's one-sided version of history. But apparently, Beijing can get the AP and Reuters to bend over backwards, and into a pretzel shape, in the course of their pandering, brown nosing, and general selling out to the Chinese Communist Party.
The AP went so far as to refer to "That other boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima," taking note of the dispute. AP also said, "A spokesman for the Dalai Lama on Thursday again rejected Beijing's right to make the final decision on reincarnations. 'Reincarnation is a religious belief and it cannot be decided by an administrative office,' Thubten Samphel said by telephone from the Tibetan government-in-exile's headquarters in the northern Indian town of Dharmsala." This means that the AP is openly admitting that "their man" is an impostor, but they are reporting this story "the Beijing way," even without authority from the Dalai Lama. One might think they could at least have the decency to refer to the "Chinese Panchen Lama" as distinct from the "Tibetan Panchen Lama," and perhaps "Chinese Buddhism" as distinct from "Tibetan Buddhism." The rightful authority for Tibet and its Buddhism is the Dalai Lama, and the AP and Reuters stories again mix and blur the distinct concepts of Chinese versus Tibetan.
It's ugly, it's disgusting, it's slanderous, and it assists Beijing in committing a crime against humanity. To any thinking intellectual, it is obvious propagandizing, and it is offensive to be assaulted with Communist propaganda while we Americans are merely sitting in our living rooms. Shame on these two newswires! —And, they should pull, retract, correct, or apologize for these "Panchen Lama" stories today.
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