trumps attacks on the news media have inspired a new genre of commentary in chinas state media march 3 2017beijing fake news a twitter post declared prejudicebased another said cleverly orchestrated lies a news article assertedpresident trumps harangues against the american news media appear to have inspired a new genre of commentary in chinas state media whose propagandists spiced up social media posts and news articles with trumpian flourishes this weekpeoples daily the flagship newspaper of the ruling communist party mimicked mr trumps characteristic bluster and his fondness for capital letters on friday in denouncing western news coverage of a chinese lawyer and human rights advocate who said he had been torturedan article on the topic a day earlier by xinhua the staterun news agency had accused the foreign news media of hype and suggested that legal activists were manipulating the press to smear the chinese governmentthe stories were essentially fake news xinhua wrote adopting a phrase that mr trump has embracedthe chinese government has long denounced western news organizations as biased and dishonest and in mr trump beijing has found an american president who often does the samethe irony in chinas criticism is apparent given beijings history of obscuring facts and censoring stories that officials deem a threat to the partyexperts said on friday that mr trumps continuing attacks on the news media would help lend credibility to chinese efforts to undermine western ideals and foreign journaliststrumps attacks on the media will offer a good excuse for chinese officials to step up their criticism of western democracy and press freedom said qiao mu a journalism professor at beijing foreign studies university china can turn to trumps attacks to say western democracy is hypocrisysome of mr trumps remarks about the news media would not seem out of place in some of chinas leading broadsheets where commentators regularly denounce independent reporting by foreign news outlets on delicate subjects like taiwan or religious persecutionrights advocates said mr trump had given china an opportunity to further distort the boundaries of journalismif the chinese version of journalism which is really only propaganda is considered mainstream it will challenge the understanding of what real journalism should be said patrick poon a researcher for amnesty international in hong kongthe heated commentary in the chinese news media came in response to foreign coverage of a chinese lawyer xie yang whose account of torture at the hands of interrogators was widely reported in january including in the new york times the reports about mr xie who is still in custody were based on transcripts of his interviews with his lawyersxinhuas report suggested that the account of the torture of mr xie who was formally arrested last year on a charge of inciting subversion of state power was fabricatedinvestigations by reporters and an investigative team have showed that the accusations were nothing but cleverly orchestrated lies the report saidxinhua said jiang tianyong a prominent human rights lawyer had invented the story and shared it with foreign activistsone of mr