Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/622093
64 tobaccoasia / Issue 5, 2015December/January) the extent of the harm caused by tobacco prod- ucts. For example, a news report titled Half a Ciga- rette Poisons a Laboratory Rat to Death in Four Minutes and 11 Seconds. The report said that in an experiment, a group of researchers injected a rat with a milliliter of liquid in which half a cigarette had been soaked, and that in four minutes and 11 seconds, the rat died. Therefore, they believed that the experiment proved how toxic cigarettes were. But in reality, any reader with common sense and even the most basic understanding of science will realize that this experiment is meaningless – the experiment mechanism itself is seriously problematic, let alone the existence of no normal control groups. Direct injection of any liquid into a rat may quickly result in the rat's death, regardless of whether this was a liquid containing tobacco, some sugar water, or even distilled water. Obviously, some media have very little understanding of science, and report such "scientific conclusions" that actually prove or identify absolutely nothing about tobacco. the public, the present situation is that increas- ing prejudice against tobacco generated by news coverage and the people's conservative impres- sion of tobacco are influencing and strengthening each other. Whenever there is a need to report on tobacco or tobacco control, it seems that the mainstream media feel that they must show their support for tobacco control in an effort to appease the public, which, quite obviously, enables them to look like socially responsible news outlets. How- ever, that happens at a cost: their reporting is a deviation of the principle of objectivity and impar- tiality, a distortion of facts, and, in fact, weakens the independent thinking and judgment capacity of readers and audiences. If we go back to the report on the trend of tobacco consumption in China released by The Lancet, the report mainly focuses on the situation of cigarette smoking by male and female smok- ers in China over a period of time, and also on certain diseases and the mortality rate caused by cigarette smoking. In particular, the most sensa- tionalized part of the report is the conclusion that one in three young men in China will eventually be killed by cigarette smoking. The relevant original sentence reads: "…by 2050, there will have been about 3 million Chinese tobacco deaths, when those born in 1970 reach the age of 80." Here, the media ignores the year 2050 and "the age of 80", which would be 35 years from now. By then, those people will no longer be young men. After realizing these facts, one will clearly see that some media channels deliberately omitted the two essential factors in their coverage, and secretly changed the concept of 80-year-old "young men". It is quite natural that when it comes to any objective facts, different people will have different points of view. As far as cigarettes are concerned, there will be some people who like them and those who don't. But the role of the media seems to be to replay and publicize the scenes of the relevant events. How to view events and how to make a choice should be a personal call by every mem- ber of the public. However, the present situation is that in their coverage, the mainstream media in China (and, truth be told, elsewhere) deliberately add some falsehoods or threats, thus increasing the sense of dislike or fear toward tobacco on the part of the general public, making such decisions increasingly based on belief rather than evidence. Thomas Jefferson once said that the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. Genuinely re- sponsible media should tell people the truth, even if the truth does not support their chosen narrative. They should enlighten their readers with the truth, rather than lead them into needless deception. The public's confidence in their media can only grow through truthful and objective coverage. " Whenever there is a need to report on tobacco or tobacco control, the mainstream media feel that they must show their support for tobacco control in an effort to appease the public. " Based on the aforementioned examples, it is clear that in their coverage of tobacco and tobac- co control issues, some Chinese media channels and outlets are highly biased, and are hell-bent on showing support for tobacco control irrespective of the truth. This means that the bias of some Chinese news media actually stems from a type of prejudice rooted in social culture, which is highly consistent – the prejudice against tobacco, rather than from the unavoidable and arbitrary personal attitude in news coverage by different media or- ganizations. Although one cannot draw a conclusion that the prejudice against cigarette smoking originates from the sensationalization by the mainstream media or from spontaneous hatred of tobacco by