Ellen Wallace
China is in the Western media this week because Condoleezza Rice is visiting Beijing and because six airlines will begin using the city’s new Terminal 3, the world’s largest airport, Friday. What appears in the news about these differs slightly. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, isn’t even writing about its new terminal yet, while CNN carries a long story. Xinhua has an older story, December 2006, about airport traffic projections. As for Rice’s visit, Western media are focusing on discussions about North Korea, while the Chinese are talking about bilateral relations – forget the Koreans.
Free Western press versus a muzzled Chinese one? "Free" is a relative term: while government censorship may not keep journalists down in the US and most of Europe (a BBC report this week says it does affect Russian TV and radio, however), reporters’ own cultural baggage can keep them chained to old ideas. "Muzzled" is also relative: Chinese journalists work within boundaries set by their government, but there is far greater freedom than in the past and as a result, far more interesting stories are surfacing than back in the days of Party Line journalism.
The two systems come head to head next week, when China will be in the news everywhere because an astonishing 2,800 journalists have registered to be accredited for the 3 and 5 March national congresses, the country’s big political events. Last year there were 2,000, already a daunting number of reporters. And, like the World Economic Forum where hundreds of journalists also show up every year, direct access to the proceedings is extremely limited.
At times like this, journalists must look around for other stories to write and they spend more time than usual talking to each other. This could be the year when Eastern journalist meets Western and they discover they have quite a lot in common.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can expect a heavy dose of China stories the first week of March. The journalists’ bosses have paid for tickets and hotels, and even if what comes out of the congresses seems dull at times, stories will have to be produced to show the boss that a trip to Beijing was not a frivolous expense.
GenevaLunch, 27 February 2008.
Filed under: Media
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