There’s protests happening in China and people will show me an article from AP, Reuters or CNN and ask “What the fuck is happening in China??”
I understand the question is “what is actually happening that the media is hiding?”. But:
What’s happening is nothing worth mentioning. Stuff happens all the time.
The media emphasizes those small acts and gives them a voice, and we internalise this voice even if we don’t want to. They make mountains out of a molehill and we see that mountain too, even when we realise it can’t be a mountain.
This goes for things not relating to protests or China too. If it comes from western media, distrust it already. Assume bad faith. Distance yourself from it as much as possible.
I think about media rhetoric a lot, and the subversion of basic critical thinking skills in most readers/viewers. You make a good resonating point about the sort of “volume” they use when reporting on shit. Every protest, every fire, every arrest, every just-a-school-or-factory “concentration camp”, they’re all extremely loud about it. It’s suddenly incredibly urgent and needs to spread like wildfire ASAP. In the increasingly rare instance when it’s about something that actually happened, it still suddenly becomes the most important, most needs-to-be-shared story in the world even if it’s minor. It’s certainly a great tactic to keep your populace from focusing on criticizing its own government.