Western journalists lose objectivity by focusing on trivialities
For some Western journalists covering the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, early this week, the biggest story was the US President Barack Obama's staircase episode at Hangzhou airport or about the few reporters who could not get close to Obama to get on-the-spot comments.
Although Obama told the news media not to "over-crank" the significance of the issue, for days, some mainstream US media outlets have been speculating that the Chinese must have "plotted" the episode to humiliate Obama.
It reminded one of some major US media outlets' reports in November 2009 saying Obama had not been treated well by the Chinese during his first visit there. White House officials strongly disagreed. Jeffrey Bader, then senior advisor for Asia in the White House National Security Council who had accompanied Obama on the trip, said the media outlets did not correctly characterize the visit.