Free market generates (some) media
freedom By James Borton
China's free-market economy is generating
unprecedented but not unlimited press freedoms, and
there's momentum. As Beijing embraces a market economy,
its proliferating news media too are becoming
privatized, more commercial, combative and fiercely
competitive. This gives rise to some of the best
investigative journalism that truly sheds light and
serves the people, and some of the worst sensationalism.
Hu Shuli, the crusading editor of Caijing
magazine, China's high-profile, successful business
publication, recently returned from Qatar, where she
joined 120 Middle Eastern and Western journalists in a
program called "Changing Media Perceptions:
Professionalism and Cultural Diversity". There was
plenty of jousting, as well as thoughtful discussion and
debate on the media's role, duties and responsibilities.
The issue of the role of media has gained traction in
the past few years, sparked by the globalization of
information reflected in the emergence of "new" media.
And China, where the media used to be totally
subservient, has taken on a more activist role.
With increased deadlines, the twice-monthly
publication Caijing (the name means "finance and
business") is soon to become a newsweekly, in which
young breathless staffers, including two foreigners,
write their articles and fact-check in preparation for
the next issue. They work in untidy cubicles, in the
same Beijing office building as Dow Jones.
Caijing and other Chinese media understand all
too well that the development of the country's media
industry is not a smooth process. Political policy
fluctuations and cycles of repression and censorship
have been the norm over the past two decades.
Never mind, China watchers know that with the
rapid shift to a market economy, the Middle Kingdom's
state-owned enterprises have been stained with almost
inevitable corruption and scandal. No wonder the
peripatetic editor has gleefully remarked, "In China
there is more news than journalists." Caijing's crusade
against corruption and its unstinting journalistic
enterprise has netted Hu the moniker, "the most
dangerous woman in China". (Repeated efforts to
interview Hu were unsuccessful, as her staff said she
was too busy.)
The central government's
decentralization policies have dictated that the news
media commercialize, since state subsidies have been
dramatically curbed. The resulting news-media
privatization and commercialization have forced China's
information gatekeepers to distinguish themselves from
keen competition. A proliferation of news media has
brought higher standards of compelling reporting in the
form of investigative articles, exposes of environmental
degradation and also has yielded, at the other end of
the spectrum, some of the worst offenses in sensational
media coverage, reminiscent of British, US and other
tabloids.
Some of these media developments were
examined by Ashley Esarey, PhD candidate in the
political science department at Columbia University, who
interviewed scores of Chinese publishers and
journalists. His research confirms that one of the major
results of China's decentralization policies is an
explosion in the number of news media, in the value of
media advertising revenues, in competition for
advertising revenue, and in newly found freedom of media
companies to report the news - as opposed to party
propaganda pablum.
"Caijing is well known for
relatively objective reporting on key events in China -
not merely for economic reporting," Esarey said in a
recent online interview with Asia Times Online. "Its
editors are successful because they stay ahead of
censors by printing stories that are off the Propaganda
Department's radar screen. They have a strong sense of
professionalism and an obligation to report the news,
but not at any cost. Because the magazine is a
profitable commercial venture, its operators want to
remain viable and therefore must follow the explicit
wishes of the [Communist] Party concerning content."
Media leaders an elite, educated
crew Hu Shuli is one of a small elite of Chinese
journalists, strengthened by a Chinese orthodox media
education: she graduated from People's University of
China, majoring in journalism and classic Western
journalism training, and earned a master of
communication degree from Stanford University.
All Chinese journalists generally graduate from
college and many have bachelor's and master's degrees in
journalism. New reporters are mandated to receive a
license from the Chinese General Administration of Press
and Publications or the Ministry of Radio, Film and
Television. However, the protocol for securing the
coveted license involves undergoing political
indoctrination and a party examination in order to be
employed in the state-controlled media.
China's
media policy shapers are caught in a quandary in the
ongoing dialogue that somehow permits new media and
conventional media to report critically on business
abuses, for example, and no longer adopt the People's
Daily propaganda reporting model. For Caijing this
relaxation of media guidelines has translated into a
paid circulation base of more than 85,000 readers. This
is a remarkable achievement given that the magazine's
newsstand price remains at a premium of US$1 a copy,
while the average annual income for a farmer remains
around $100 and that of an urban resident the equivalent
of $1,000 a year.
Hu, 51 and seasoned in China's
propaganda/journalism disputes, understands the
government media policy since she previously worked for
more than a decade as a reporter for the Worker's Daily.
She generously compensates her more than 40 staffers for
their long hours and professionalism.
Caijing, a
genuinely gutsy publication, was established in 1998 by
Wang Boming, the son of a former deputy minister, who
previously created China's stock markets and was
responsible for the early launch of Securities Market
Weekly, which was published for a retail and
institutional market and reached a paid circulation of
almost a million readers. His corporation, the Stock
Exchange Media Council (SEMC), has realized 20-30%
growth each year in revenues, so it's no surprise that
Wang's publications reflect China's new media
transformation.
"In the past, the Chinese media
were either official or semi-official; however, today
market-driven media have become China's fastest-growing
information sources, as well as some of the more
prosperous companies," editor Hu said of the media's
role, in a speech to the China Business Summit in
Shanghai last year.
The Chinese news media are
the official voice of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
transmitting its political will to the people.
Ninety-eight percent of Chinese households, or almost
1.167 billion Chinese out of a total 1.3 billion, watch
broadcasts beamed by more than 1,600 television
stations. Millions more read 2,137 daily and weekly
newspapers.
New political reforms mean bolder
journalism With the Middle Kingdom's political
landscape ushering in even newer reforms, the media seem
to be willing to take bolder actions, which sometimes
place editors and reporters in jail or under house
arrest at the very least. The questions remain: Are the
laws and policies securely in place to allow China's new
media to continue their march toward independence, adopt
stringent investigative-reporting standards and offer
critical commentary? Can China's new news media create a
public debate and present options for resolving the
country's pressing social, economic and political
problems? To what extent are ethical and professional
standards being pursued and taught at China's journalism
programs?
In the 1980s, leader Deng Xiaoping's
motto, "seek truth from facts", set the tone for all
kinds of reportage. This year's lively discourse among
Beijing's policy shapers has become intense because of
the changing communication environment in China. The
advent of new technologies and media convergence are
generating new opportunities for people to get more
connected in the information society. Press systems are
opening up, allowing for more creativity, more choices
and access to information critical to the demands of
development. This was evident last year in China during
the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak
and in the response of the online Chinese media and
brazen bloggers.
The media were very tightly
controlled in China during the SARS epidemic until
mid-April 2003 when Caijing found a discrepancy between
the information on the epidemic released by the World
Health Organization (WHO) and the central government.
(This revelation came after Time magazine's article on
the SARS victims hidden in Beijing military hospitals.)
Caijing gambled successfully that the CCP could not
continue to suppress news on the epidemic once it got on
the Internet, and it decided to prepare the cover story
"The Beijing files", claims communications Professor
Joseph Chan from Chinese University in Hong Kong.
Few dispute that Caijing is a pioneer in
professional journalism and is a model for emulation,
generating new competition. According to a newly
released policy white paper commissioned by the
International Committee of American Business Media,
Chinese authorities have closed down almost 700
periodicals because of new policy shifts, ending
"command subscriptions" and transferring party control
to publishing companies.
Despite the
considerable restrictions on the news media, the role of
the Chinese press has changed from a CCP propaganda
conduit to a provider of news for emerging middle-class
consumers. Even Chinese web portals have encouraged
competition among news organizations. News often appears
on the Internet either exclusively or before it is
disseminated by mainstream traditional print and
broadcast media.
"What is unique in China is
that the news Internet websites have become primary
sources of news," wrote Caijing editor Hu Shuli in
Journalism Asia, published by the Center for Media
Freedom and Responsibility in Manila. "If we want to
find out what happened recently in China, we would log
on to news websites such as Sina. The major websites
such as Sina, Sohu, Netease, especially Sina, own almost
all the copyrights for traditional media news
broadcasting, and have thus become the leading news
websites with an extremely large news platform."
While publishing and other media may still be
considered ideologically sensitive, some enterprising
Chinese publishers know that a pragmatic brand of
self-censorship (knowing how far to push the envelope),
coupled with major media initiatives, proliferating
media and morphing communication technology, may very
well set them free for a short march to commercial
growth and press liberalization.
James
Borton is a freelance journalist and director of
Asia Pacific Projects for Foreign Affairs. He can be
reached atasiareview@yahoo.com.
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