FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Lauren Gonitzke | CODEPINK China campaign coordinator | [email protected]
WHERE: ViacomCBS Building (1515 Broadway) NYC, NY
WHEN: Thursday 2/3 at 2pm ET
February 3rd, 2022 — CODEPINK and partners from The People’s Forum NYC sent over 2,000 signatures to The Daily Show in multiple ways, including hand-delivering to the studio in New York City, NY, urging Trevor Noah to stop spreading dangerous misinformation about China.
On The Daily Show episode “Why Is China in Africa?” (12/16/21), Trevor Noah resurrected the false, Trump-era narrative of China using “debt-trap diplomacy” with African nations. Noah devoted air-time to disparaging China as a predatory loan shark when this myth has already been debunked several times now by experts like Dr. Deborah Brautigam, a Sinologist-Africanist professor of international development at Johns Hopkins University.
CODEPINK’s letter, with nearly 2,050 signatures, calls on Trevor Noah to stop using his influence and platform at The Daily Show for war and mis-educating his audience with anti-China rhetoric. You can read the full letter here.
The U.S. hybrid war on China involves much more than the explicit, dangerous U.S. military buildup to surround China in the South China Sea; it also involves misinformation campaigns to manufacture consent for increased military aggression and war.
At CODEPINK, we are firmly anti-war, and we fear that this pattern of self-proclaimed “left” and “progressive” media outlets targeting China is a set-up for the U.S. to fool the American public into allowing the war machine to keep running, as the people at home languish from government inaction. The U.S. government would rather pad the pockets of military defense contractors than invest in life-affirming services for its citizens.
“The age of disinformation extends far beyond Trump’s presidency,” said CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans. “It’s not a coincidence that the mainstream media continues to sensationalize and inflate the ‘threat’ of China and Russia.”
Lauren Gonitzke, assistant for the China Is Not Our Enemy campaign, said, “It’s disappointing to see late night satire news shows fall in line to beat the war drum.”
