Western media bias?

A few weeks ago, following the unblocking of BBC’s English language material in China, I came across an article in BBC which reported that the Chinese people were critical of the Western media’s, including BBC’s, coverage of China, such as the recent riots in Lhasa. Partly as a consequence this sentiment, we saw in China last week a wave of protests against the French supermarket chain Carrefour.

According to the Marxist school and political economy approach, one of the problems with contemporary journalism is that no matter how professional a news agency tries to be, it will always be biased towards the rich and powerful. If this assumption is correct, and provided that the Western media is indeed biased, then perhaps what we see is the Marxist theory being applied on a global scale – the world’s dominant media infused with the values representative of Western civilization – comprised of the most powerful nations in the world – and marginalizing weaker competing views (such as China’s).