NewsMax.com: How China's Propaganda Machine Works
Joan Maltese It's the tail end of the graveyard shift in a newsroom in Beijing. Abandoned
glasses of shrubby teas stand among the computer terminals, looking like biology
experiments. As the on-duty Foreign Expert at China Central Television's
English-language news channel, I am tapping out the headlines for the 8 a.m.
broadcast, which have been carefully chosen and sequenced by the director and
producer. As for me, I'm well versed in the verbiage the censor will require.
Accordingly, I write: Chinese Communist Party General
Secretary Hu Jintao delivers an important speech on how to continue using
agriculture to build an all-around well-off society. Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference Chairman Li Ruihuan says Macao has witnessed social
stability and sustained economic expansion since it returned to the mainland's
umbrella. Plane crashes in Turkey and the
U.S. kill 96. That wraps up 8 a.m. I click the Submit button and go for a walk through the
silent halls and cells of the CCTV-9 news offices, trying not to disturb the 50
percent of the staff who are sound asleep. This is the headquarters of a national news service reaching millions of
households in China, plus satellite subscribers in Britain and France, and Fox
cable satellite subscribers in selected U.S. cities. The Fox cable deal prompted
several changes, including expansion to 24-hour coverage, because it is a
hopeful spearhead into the global media market. "Your first window on China,"
goes our motto. "China's best foot forward," is the unofficial strategy. You'd think the place would be noisy and busy, even with the graveyard staff
winding down. Phones ringing, editors needling for an exact quotation, the
director pressing the techies to make sure the links are up for a live
interview. But not at CCTV-9 -- not now, nor on the evening news shift with
North Korea and Iraq both on the brink of war and the Columbia space shuttle
just blown up with its crew. With the exception of a handful of mostly upbeat field reports and the
government-issue propaganda, our news all comes from wire services. Pull it off
the computer, shape it to suit the party line, and shunt it off to the censor,
at least one of whom is onsite around the clock. No communication with remote
bureaus or foreign-based reporters, no exclusives, no contacts, no fussing with
time differences, no pressure. It's a good place to catch up on your sleep. China Central Television is the state-controlled television broadcast
service. It falls under the authority of the State Administration of Radio, Film
and Television and has suffered the attention of the Chinese leader himself. "Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of China, yesterday called on the country's mass media to create a 'sound
atmosphere' for the Party's upcoming congress," began a front-page item in an
August 2002 issue of the China Daily, the government's English-language
propaganda sheet. China's media were so obedient to this call that what should
have been rival organizations were giving each other plugs. "China's leading
newspaper," began a CCTV-9 broadcast just before the congress, "the People's
Daily, will run an editorial Friday hailing the opening of the 16th National
Congress of the Communist Party in Beijing. ... The editorial also notes that
the thought of [Jiang Zemin's] "Three Represents" has provided fundamental
answers to vital questions. To add another level of incest, the source for the CCTV-9 item was Xinhua,
China's official news agency. (Is anyone trying to scoop anyone here? Is anyone
watching his rival's every comma to expose untruths? Does anyone risk losing
audience to the competition for peddling pap?) Closer to the ground, it's harder to tell who's in charge of what exactly or
how everything fits together. There is no organizational chart available to
employees at CCTV-9, no roster or handbook or HR department or company
newsletter or all-hands meetings or any other formal means of acquainting
employees with the organization they work for. Language barriers in the newsroom
go largely unaddressed. Changes come down from management like thunderbolts. The
budget is opaque, although it is known that salaries for Chinese staff are
routinely five months in arrears. China's Larry King If you're not one of our satellite subscribers outside China, you can go to
cctv-9.com and watch our broadcasts to get an idea of why we're here. China has
opened up and reformed! Our news shows look just like yours! We have actual
anchors who wear neckties! (Another channel, CCTV-12, has an interview set so
similar to Larry King's that it's probably some sort of copyright infringement.)
One thing management has provided is a mission: to make our employer, the
central government, look good. That's why "Your first window on China" always affords a sunny view. When a
British tourist was murdered near the Great Wall, CCTV-9 knew nothing about it.
When the police shut down all the Internet cafes in Beijing, our coverage never
questioned the party line that it was for safety reasons. When Falun-Gong-hunting
cops raided my hostel one winter midnight, putting dozens of foreign backpackers
and workaday Chinese out on the street without a moment's notice, CCTV-9
staffers were amused and sympathetic, but there was no coverage. When a group of
North Koreans made a dramatic break into the Spanish embassy in Beijing that was
played repeatedly on CNN, you never heard a word from us. I went down to the Spanish embassy that afternoon in March 2002 and found
Beijing's small community of real journalists. Reuters, CNN, Hong Kong's
Phoenix, the BBC -- everyone was there except "Your first window on China." When an enterprising intern who also worked as a translator and interpreter
wanted to do an exposé on China's woefully unsupervised translation and
interpretation business, she was told to forget it. "Why would you want
foreigners to know about this problem?" demanded those in charge. The irony
seems lost on them that this method of making China look good is simply exposing
the country as a joke. So they're especially stone-faced when someone within the ranks refuses to
deliver the punch line. We had a business reporter exceptional by any standards
who kept implicitly asking: "But what is China reforming from? Never mind
all the self-praise for digging ourselves out; how did we get into this hole in
the first place?" When she finally quit CCTV-9 in frustration to work for a renowned global
news service, an executive producer sat her down and threatened to personally
ruin her career by informing every official and person of consequence whom she
would ever need as a source that she was untrustworthy and shouldn't be touched.
When she wasn't moved, she got a star's sendoff. Several high-ranking executives
wrote slurs for her personnel file and then made her pay a full year's salary.
But it's natural that CCTV-9 would want her under their wing instead of
someone else's. They study the foreign press, and they know what happens when
journalists go legit. These entries appear in a weekly survey dated Oct. 15, 2002 of China coverage
in the foreign press. It circulates among the executive producers at CCTV-9 and
probably originates in the Foreign Ministry. The survey is comprehensive and
includes neutral-toned articles on business, sports and culture. No one to whom I showed this survey knew exactly how it was used at CCTV-9,
but it's evident that management is kept in the loop of the state's monitoring
of foreign journalism. Not one of these stories was ever covered by CCTV-9. When
we want a lively domestic tidbit to lead a broadcast, here's what we go with:
"Premier Zhu went to visit an organic farm in Salzburg, some 140 miles west
of Vienna. The farm has an area of 38 acres, half grassland and half forest.
Products made of sheep's milk are the main industry on the farm." Footnote: 1. Yes, you read that right, "the Three Represents." I won't
trouble you with an explanation of this body of thought, but I will tell you the
Chinese Communist Party has pronounced it a breakthrough in Marxist ideology,
which guarantees it a spot in China's political catechism - see also the One
Country-Two Systems policy, the Three Antis, the Three Direct Links, the Four
Cleanups, the Five Antis, the Five Red Categories, the Five Black Categories,
the stinking ninth category, the Ten Major Relationships, the Sixty Points on
Working Methods, etc. Joan Maltese of San Diego worked for China Central Television. Next in the
series: China controls the people by keeping them in ignorance. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/7/3/134334.shtml
Special for NewsMax.com
Friday, July 4, 2003
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