Teaching Comparative

When the news is old

The media in China exhibit the conservatism of an entrenched authoritarian regime. It's one of the ways used by Party officials to maintain power and authority. But it relies, in large part, on preventing things like the Internet from offering alternative versions of reality.

The report excerpted below is by Edward Cody and was published in the Washington Post.

In a Changing China, News Show Thrives With Timeworn Ways

"In the face of radical economic and social changes over the past two decades, the choreography of news has helped China retain its monopoly on power. All television stations and newspapers remain government-controlled; news reports are routinely organized by propaganda officials and bolstered by interviews with local Communist Party secretaries...

"[T]he official 7 p.m. Network News Broadcast [is] the government's flagship program. It has long occupied a status all its own, confined to old-style Communist orthodoxy with a tenacity that has its anchors looking like holdouts from the 1970s and its reports on public affairs like a party bulletin board.

"Network News Broadcast has become one of the world's most watched news programs...

"Leadership appearances on the program have followed the same script for years: The party chief, currently President Hu Jintao, is invariably shown first; followed by Wu Bangguo, head of the National People's Congress and the party's second-ranking member; followed by Wen Jiabao, premier and third-ranking member; and so on down the hierarchy. Each leader is allocated a certain number of seconds in front of the camera, Chinese media experts say, with the time for each one carefully regulated by the party propaganda department...

"Zhan Jiang, dean of the Journalism and Communication Department at Beijing's China Youth University for Political Sciences, said the 7 p.m. broadcast seems to have been reserved as a last stand by conservative party propaganda authorities reluctant to see the old ways disappear...

"Zhou Xiaopu, a professor at the Renmin University School of Journalism who has done research on the program, said the main viewers are China's legions of government and party officials, particularly in the provinces, and businessmen who want to keep up with the policies and attitudes that will affect their ability to make money..."

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Labels: China, media

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:35 AM