A Democratic mayor in Southern California has been charged by the Department of Justice with acting as an illegal agent for the People's Republic of China — spreading communist propaganda, coordinating with PRC intelligence, and responding to Beijing officials with "Thank you leader." And the three major broadcast networks pretended it didn't happen.
If a Republican mayor had been charged as a spy for Russia, it would've been the lead story on every network for a month. But a Democrat working for China? Crickets.
Eileen Wang, the 58-year-old mayor of Arcadia, California, faces federal charges for acting as an illegal foreign agent for Beijing. According to the DOJ indictment, Wang helped spread Chinese government propaganda — including pushing the line that "there is no genocide in Xinjiang" and "there is no such thing as 'forced labor.'" She wasn't freelancing. She was taking direction from people connected to the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
The indictment names John Chen — also known as "Chen Jun" — as a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus who has personally met with President Xi Jinping. That's the caliber of people Wang was working with. This isn't some low-level misunderstanding about foreign contacts. This is a sitting American mayor coordinating with Chinese spies.
As far back as June 2021, PRC officials were contacting Wang via WeChat. By August 2021, Wang and three associates were sharing propaganda articles through a website called the U.S. News Center. They reported back to their handlers when the content got traction — one article was viewed 15,128 times, and the PRC official responded "So fast, thank you everyone." Wang's advisor, identified only as Sun, has already been sentenced to 20 months in prison. Wang herself faces up to 10 years.
So where were ABC, CBS, and NBC?
NewsBusters' Jorge Bonilla documented the complete broadcast blackout. All three major networks ignored the story entirely. Not a segment. Not a mention. Not a crawl at the bottom of the screen. Nothing.
The irony is that NBC's own Tom Costello actually covered the story on NBC News Now — the network's streaming platform — saying "We want to get to some breaking news out of California" about a mayor "facing federal charges now for acting as an illegal Chinese agent." So NBC had the story. They just decided the broadcast audience — the bigger audience — didn't need to hear about it.
Think about that. NBC's streaming reporters thought a Chinese spy mayor was breaking news. NBC's broadcast producers thought it was worth burying. Same network. Two completely different editorial decisions. Guess which one the average American actually watches.
Meanwhile, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, and CNN all covered it. This wasn't some obscure blog post. Major outlets reported on it. The broadcast networks made a conscious choice to look the other way.
We all know why. The letter next to her name is D. If Eileen Wang had been a Republican, Brian Stelter's ghost would've risen from the media graveyard to do a twelve-part series on it. But a Democrat mayor literally answering to Chinese intelligence with "Thank you leader" doesn't fit the narrative, so into the memory hole it goes.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California is prosecuting the case. The DOJ has the indictment. The facts are public. And the networks that spent four years screaming about Russian collusion can't find five minutes for an actual, documented case of a Democrat serving as a foreign agent for America's greatest adversary.
That tells you everything you need to know about who the media is protecting — and it's not you.