MCLC: media on pollution

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: media on pollution
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (1/14/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/world/asia/china-allows-media-to-report-a
larming-air-pollution-crisis.html

China Lets Media Report on Air Pollution Crisis
By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — The Chinese state news media on Monday published aggressive
reports on what they described as the sickening and dangerous air
pollution in Beijing and other parts of northern China, indicating that
popular anger over air quality had reached a level where Communist Party
propaganda officials felt that they had to allow the officially sanctioned
press to address the growing concerns of ordinary citizens.

The across-the-board coverage of Beijing’s brown, soupy air, which has
been consistently rated “hazardous” or even worse
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/science/earth/beijing-air-pollution-off-
the-charts.html?_r=0> by foreign and local monitors since last week, was
the most open in recent memory. Since 2008, when Beijing made efforts to
clean up the city before the Summer Olympics, the air has appeared to
degrade in the view of many residents, though the official news media have
often avoided addressing the problem.

The wide coverage on Monday appears to be in part a reaction to the
conversation that has been unfolding on Chinese microblogs, where
residents of northern China have been discussing the pollution nonstop in
recent days.

The problem is so serious — the worst air quality since the United States
Embassy began recording levels in 2008 — that hospitals reported on Monday
a surge in patient admissions for respiratory problems. Beijing officials
ordered government cars off the road to try to curb the pollution, which
some people say has been exacerbated by a weather phenomenon, called an
inversion, that is trapping dirty particles.

“I’ve never seen such broad Chinese media coverage of air pollution,” said
Jeremy Goldkorn, a business consultant in Beijing who tracks the Chinese
news media. “From People’s Daily to China Central Television, the story is
being covered thoroughly, without trying to put a positive spin on it.”

People’s Daily, the official party mouthpiece, published a front-page
signed editorial on Monday under the headline “Beautiful China Starts With
Healthy Breathing.” “The seemingly never-ending haze and fog may blur our
vision,” it said, “but makes us see extra clearly the urgency of pollution
control and the urgency of the theory of building a socialist ecological
civilization, revealed at the 18th Party Congress.”

The 18th Party Congress, a meeting of party elites held in Beijing last
November, was part of a once-a-decade leadership transition. In a
political report delivered on the first day, Hu Jintao, the president and
departing party chief, said China must address environmental problems
worsened by rapid development. The inclusion of sections in the report on
the need for “ecological progress” could be opening the door for greater
dialogue on such issues under the watch of Xi Jinping, the new party
chief, and his colleagues on the Politburo Standing Committee.

Even before the congress, the official news media had some latitude to
publish critiques of environmental policy and investigate environmental
degradation, in contrast to strict limits on what they can say on “core
interest” issues like Tibet and Taiwan. Nevertheless, the coverage
unfolding now represents a new level of depth in addressing air pollution.

Bill Bishop, the editor of Sinocism, a daily online newsletter about news
media coverage of China, wrote on Monday
<http://sinocism.com/?utm_source=Sinocism+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8af013ab3
8-Sinocism_01_14_13&utm_medium=email> that “Chinese media is all over the
story in a remarkably transparent contrast to today’s haze in Beijing.”

Mr. Bishop, who is also a columnist for the DealBook blog of The New York
Times, wrote: “Clearly it is impossible to pretend that the air is not
polluted or that the health risks are not significant, so are the
propaganda authorities just recognizing reality in allowing coverage? Or
is there something more going on here, as perhaps the new government wants
to both demonstrate a commitment to transparency and accountability as
well as use this crisis to further the difficult reforms toward a more
sustainable development model?”

China Youth Daily, a state-run newspaper, published a scathing signed
commentary on Monday under the headline “Lack of Responsive Actions More
Choking Than the Haze and Fog.” The commentary questioned basic economic
policies and the China growth model: “This choking, dirty and poisonous
air forces the Chinese to rethink the widespread, messy development model.”

Global Times, a newspaper that often defends the party, said in an
editorial <http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/755570.shtml> that the
government in the past had erred by releasing pollution information in a
“low-key way.” It said: “In the future, the government should publish
truthful environmental data to the public. Let society participate in the
process of solving the problem.”

On Saturday, when a Twitter feed <http://twitter.com/beijingair> from the
United States Embassy rated the air in central Beijing an astounding 755
on an air quality scale of 0 to 500, China Central Television, the main
state network, devoted a large part of its 7 p.m. newscast to the
pollution. That night, the Beijing government reported alarming levels of
a potentially deadly particulate matter called PM 2.5; in some districts,
it exceeded 900 micrograms per cubic meter, on par with some days of the
killer smog in London
<http://www.wjla.com/blogs/weather/2011/12/dec-9-1952-killer-fog-smothers-4
-000-people-in-london-13893.html> in the mid-20th century.

Under pressure from the existence of the embassy monitor and growing anger
among prominent Chinese Internet users, Chinese officials have been
releasing more data on PM 2.5 levels, in a sign of creeping transparency.
Beijing began reporting PM 2.5 levels in January 2012. Xinhua, the
state-run news agency, announced late last year
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-11/25/c_131997657.htm> that
the Ministry of Environmental Protection had required 74 cities to start
releasing PM 2.5 data. For years, Chinese officials had been trying to
limit public information to data on PM 10 or other pollutants that are
generally considered less deadly than PM 2.5, which is invisible and can
lodge deep in the lungs.

“Last year, Chinese media began to report with regularity on air
pollution, especially in Beijing and concerning PM 2.5 in particular,” Mr.
Goldkorn said. “But the apocalyptic skies above the capital this last
weekend seemed to have encouraged an even greater enthusiasm for reporting
this story.”

Mia Li contributed research.