The Racism Fueled by Western Media Coverage of COVID-19

Read the discriminatory hashtags that have trended on Twitter as COVID-19 cases in the U.S. grow at an unprecedented rate. Americans of all races and ethnicities now open Instagram and Facebook to horrific floods of anti-Asian racism. And for those of us who are Chinese-American ourselves—those of us who bear a striking resemblance to the children, mothers, fathers, and grandparents who have suffered undeserved physical and verbal abuse—our hearts continuously ache.

“Go back to your country.”

“Stop eating bats and cats—infectious, diseased animals.”

“Thank you for bringing this deadly disease to America.”

We silently endure the accusatory glares and the imperceptible shuffling as others shift away from us on the subway. We hold in our coughs and sneezes in fear of judgment. And we seethe with anger at the unfairness and irrationality of it all. How is it OUR fault? Anyone can contract and spread the coronavirus. So why all the hatred towards Asians? Because Asians have become the face of Western media coverage of the coronavirus, and China has become the center of Western criticism.

This stems from a host of factors, the first of which is that Western media’s coverage of COVID-19 is incredibly racialized. News articles and videos often use images or footage of Asians when reporting about the virus. Even when the content of the article has no relation to Asians or Asian-Americans, the images still feature Asians and areas dense with Chinese-American populations. The New York Daily News article titled “NYC Seeks At Least 20 Million to Fight Coronavirus: de Blasio Official,” for instance, includes an image of a group of Asian-Americans wearing masks at JFK airport, despite the fact that these people are completely irrelevant to the article’s content. The New York Post linked a picture of an Asian man wearing a mask in Flushing, Queens to their article about the first case of coronavirus in New York City on Twitter, even though the reported victim lived in Manhattan, not Flushing. These signifiers all subtly reinforce the association between Asians and the coronavirus.

This perceived association escalates to racism as mainstream media platforms continue to publish articles and use header images that reinforce centuries-old stereotypes about China and its people. Media outlets’ coverage of the coronavirus sensationalizes Chinese wet markets and criticizes the unsanitary culture of consuming exotic wildlife. CNN and Business Insider flood their articles with countless outdated photographs that showcase a wide array of sickening images, ranging from vendors selling live poultry to stalls where dog meat, peacocks, and Civet cats are being sold. None of the photos were taken in recent years—CNN’s photo of the peacocks was captured in 2004, the Civet cat was from 2003, and Business Insider’s dog market image was from 2014—which should decrease their validity significantly. Among these photos are also images of wildlife vendors that were not even taken in China, but that nonetheless work to further criticize China’s unsanitary consumption of wildlife. Business Insider displays images of bat vendors from Indonesia, pangolin in Vietnam, and pig markets in the Philippines. The images are then accompanied by bolded descriptions that dramatize claims without a clear indication of the sourcing of these reports:

“Reports indicate that before the Huanan market closed, vendors there sold seafood, meat, and live animals, including chickens, donkeys, sheep, pigs, foxes, badgers, bamboo rats, hedgehogs, and snakes.”

Moreover, outlets like CNN go so far as to indicate that China's consumption of wildlife is rooted in its culture—“the cultural roots of China's use of wild animals run deep”—when China, or any Asian country for that matter, does not have a tradition of eating exotic wildlife at all. The use of outdated photographs, along with sourceless, untrue descriptions, only propagates the tireless Orientalist trope that China and other Asian countries engage in uncivilized consumption of exotic wildlife that poses dangers—even ones as dire as the coronavirus pandemic—to global health. Despite admitting that the coronavirus may not even have originated from the Wuhan wet markets nor the consumption of wildlife, Western media continues to sensationalize its findings with its relentless racist tropes.

Anti-Asian sentiment is further exacerbated by the media’s attempts to undermine China and its Communist Party. Rather than publicizing China’s successful recovery and quarantine efforts, Western media is fixated on blaming China’s Communist, authoritarian government for the spread of the virus. Western media outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have bashed China’s response to the coronavirus and have attributed the delay of crucial information about the coronavirus to authoritarian censorship in China. The most prominent example of China’s censorship regarding crucial information on the coronavirus, these news outlets posit, is the suppression of statements made by Chinese whistleblower Dr. Li Wen Liang. The New York Times argues that the Wuhan local government’s retraction of his statements about the “mysterious illness” had “allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.” However, the New York Times and other sources blatantly disregard the fact that Dr. Li Wen Liang did not warn of the coronavirus—he just made false claims that SARS was coming back in his WeChat post. Not only were his claims false, but, as an opthamologist, he also lacked the credibility to back any such claims.

Western media also conveniently withheld the knowledge that Dr. Li was not a conventional whistleblower because one, Dr. Li did not intend for his information to go public, and two, the national government had already been made aware of a novel coronavirus from a report submitted by another doctor. Dr. Li himself had posted about SARS in a private WeChat group with his colleagues, and cautioned them against leaking the information. However, his posts had been screenshotted and leaked the following day on December 30. He did not deliberately expose information that was deemed illegal within a public organization, per the definition of a whistleblower. Western media also conveniently ignored the fact that the first doctor who noted the novel coronavirus was Zhang Ji Xian, who submitted an official report to the Chinese government on December 27, much earlier than Dr. Li’s supposed “whistleblowing” on December 30. In fact, Dr. Li’s reporting was based on leaked information from Dr. Zhang’s own report.

China did not delay information nor avoid “openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment,” as The New York Times put it. Promptly after receiving Dr. Zhang’s notice and prior to Dr. Li’s whistleblowing on December 30, the Chinese Center for Disease Control announced the novel coronavirus and alarmed the World Health Organization (WHO) by December 31. In fact, the WHO has repeatedly applauded China’s cooperation and efforts at containment, despite Western media’s endless, indiscriminate criticism.

There are countless other examples of Western media bias and attempts at undermining China’s approach at containing the coronavirus. However, these are but meager attempts at diverting current public frustration over the failure of the American public health system in suppressing our own coronavirus outbreak.

As of now, the number of cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. and Italy have both surpassed China’s. China has had zero domestic cases of the coronavirus since mid-March because of its swift and effective response. Despite the US.. having known about the threat of coronavirus since January, it remains grossly unprepared to address the public health crisis. Faced with public outrage, U.S. media platforms have instead resorted to blaming China and its Communist, authoritarian government for its failure at containment.

Western media’s portrayal has instigated an influx of hate crimes against Asian-Americans. Consumers of media have identified Asian-Americans as the carriers of the coronavirus due to racialized reporting. Asian-Americans, whose identities are more often than not perceived to be associated with their nationalities, suffer racist blows by those who pin the spread of the coronavirus on China’s “Communist, authoritarian regime” and the Chinese’s “dirty, dog-eating habits.”

To mainstream media: please stop engaging in sensationalist, racist coverage of the coronavirus, and stop blaming China for the coronavirus. The needless blame has brought about an onslaught of excessive hate crimes. In the face of the crisis wrought by COVID-19, it is more crucial than ever to unite in solidarity and offer sympathy.