Mediaboss Marketing

Stories about media control and repression in China are legiondaily propaganda directives, stories spiked, journalists firedbut Chinese officials do not always reveal how they really feel about the press. What is the media, anyway, to a Chinese Communist Party apparatchik?

Now, in their own words (which sometimes employ vulgarity) these official say the media is a tool to be used: a mouthpiece, an obedient servant, and a lapdogand the expectations even seem to extend to the foreign media.

In July 2009, a reporter with China National Radio, a state-run broadcaster, was seeking to interview officials working on the Zhengzhou Urban and Rural Planning Bureau, during a series of events the bureau was holding. In one of the public meetings, a citizen raised an issue with the construction project. So when the reporter finally got his chance to meet with Li Chengxiang, the deputy chief of the planning bureau at the time, he asked him about these grievances.

And then the reporter received an earful: Do you speak for the Chinese Communist Party or are you going to speak for the people? Li Chengxiang said, angrily, according to Sina, a major Chinese news portal.

The presumption was that officials with the press, in particular the state press, have a one-way responsibility: to propagandize the policies of the state.

Observant readers were quick to point out that Lis question also contains an important theoretical discrepancy: by asking whether the reporter was representing either the Party or the people, he was implying that the interests of the two diverged. While that is indeed mostly the case in China, Party doctrine states clearly that the Party is actually the ultimate representative of the people.

The press pass in many places acts as an amulet for journalists, allowing them easy entry and exit from places not usually reserved for the public. But it doesnt always work that way when dealing with Chinese officials.

In April 2010, when a reporter with the state-affiliated Legal Daily, presented his press pass to Zhang Shi, a public resource official in Zhejiang Province, Zhang simply said: This is useless.

The reporter pressed further. Why do I have to accept your interview? Zhang responded. I refuse to be interviewed. And you cant do jack about it.

Li asked How could it be useless? Its issued by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the agency that is in charge of media control. The arguing did him no good, however.

See the original post:
How Chinese Officials View the Press