On Oct 14, a provocatively titled forum at the Frankfurt Book Fair, “News from the Evil Nation?” was held to discuss western media coverage of China, and it was chronicled by Deutsche Welle reporter Xie Fei (谢菲) in Chinese (here). However, Germany’s official Deutsche Welle web site is regularly firewalled in the PRC, presumably because the authorities consider its coverage “anti-China.” So most Chinese citizens couldn’t read this report.
Certain parts of the original have been deleted from Cankao’s version, however. To show English speakers how repackaging/censorship works in the People’s Republic, an English version of Deutsche Welle’s Chinese original is reproduced below (thanks to EastSouthWestNorth). Words that have been crossed out are those that did not appear in Cankao’s Chinese-language article (Cankao Xiaoxi, Oct 18, 2009, page eight) distributed throughout China:
Book Fair Discussion:
Is Western Media’s China Coverage Biased?
On October 14, the Heinrich Böll Foundation hosted a public forum at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The topic was, “News from the Evil Nation?” The guests and the audience discussed the issue of whether western media coverage of China had predisposed biases and whether the hidden rule of journalism that “only negative news is good news” is still applicable in an era of globalization.
The forum host (Aida Mayer of the Heinrich Böll Foundation) made a brief introduction about the background of the discussion forum: “In recent years, the image of China has changed in the German media. The Chinese and German media are accusing each other of ‘brain-washing’ their public and charging each other’s journalists with lack of professionalism. So we would like to ask, What are the disagreements between China and Germany? The Heinrich Böll Foundation has even conducted a special media research project on this subject. We are holding this discussion forum at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the hope that we can share our viewpoints here.”
Professor Kai Hafez of the University of Erfurt is one of the researchers in the Heinrich Boell Foundation research project on media reporting of China. Professor Hafez said that he raised the question when the project began: How much do Germans know about China or its people? Professor Hafez’s answer today is the same as what he began with: “Generally speaking, Germans do not know much about China. They may in fact know nothing.”
Hafez said that German school teach very little about China. Apart from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and large construction projects such as the Three Gorges Dam, they present almost nothing about China. It is far from adequate to understand such a large nation based upon so little knowledge. Professor Hafez believes that because the knowledge base about China is so puny, the German media must provide remedial lessons for the German people through their reporting on China.
University of Duisberg political science professor and China expert Thomas Heberer pointed out that there have been especially more negative reports about China since the 1990s. This is related to the rise of China and the anxiety of China. “The German-language media often only see one aspect of China. In truth, there are other aspects of China. The main angle in German media reporting is the human rights violations in China. But China is also a nation that is developing rapidly socially and economically. But the German media frequently ignore that.”
Professor Heberer gave an example about a German magazine printing “Yellow Spies” on the cover with a photo of a Chinese person. This sort of provocation will naturally hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and draw their protests.
NDR TV’s international affairs team director Stefan Niemann, who was the Beijing correspondent for the ARD public television in Germany for many years, admitted that the German media have made many mistakes in their reporting. These mistakes are often unacceptable and embarrassing. “For example, in reporting on the Tibet incident, they described the Nepalese police as Chinese police. This is a terrible reporting mistake. There is a lot of rubbish in the media reporting. But this is not just reports about China. The poor reporting also occurs reports about other nations. But I still believe that the German media has raised its level in both quantity and quality of reporting about China.”
Niemann also said that some people say that German correspondents always interview the same “familiar” faces (namely, those so-called dissidents) and won’t make contact with other Chinese. Niemann said: “We must realize that China is not the same as Germany. They do not have the kind of NGO’s which can organize the contacts. As foreign correspondents, it is hard to find suitable people to interview. There are just a few courageous so-called dissidents who are not afraid of retaliation from the government. It is not that we only interview a few dissidents out of 1.3 billion Chinese people. The practical conditions make it hard. But if you observe carefully, you will see that the reports about the economic progress in China will be about the lives of ordinary people. We do not listen only to the voices of dissidents.”
Niemann admitted that the media are more willing to publish negative reports to draw audience concern, even to create a sensational effect. To Professor Hafez, this type of hidden rule that “only negative news is good news” is out-moded and even counter-productive. “I can say that 99% of the overseas Chinese are like the Chinese in China in that they believe western media reports of China are negative and biased. This has caused the Chinese government to gain more trust among its people. The German media had the goal of reporting on human rights violation in China in order to trigger political changes. This has not happened. In fact, the actual situation is the complete opposite.”
The guests and the audience members hold different viewpoints about German media coverage of China. But when the meeting ended, everybody generally agreed on one thing: The viewpoints propagated by the media are not necessarily the viewpoints of the public. The public has a right to have their own viewpoints on something. They have the right not to agree with the media reports. This is the most basic realization of freedom of speech and freedom of press.
October 24th, 2009 at 7:58 am
what censorship?
October 25th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Are XINHUA & CANKAO finally becoming subtle & sophisticated? Like Western media? Thank God & about time! I mean, just recall: the selective cropping of photos from Tibet, in recent memory…!