MCLC: journalists should be govt mouthpieces

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: journalist should be govt mouthpieces
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Source: NYT (12/5/11):
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/journalists-should-be-governmen
t-mouthpieces-chinas-state-tv-president-says/

Journalists Should Be Government Mouthpieces, Chinese Media Leader Says
By J. DAVID GOODMAN

The new president of China’s largest television network, the state-run
organization known CCTV, drew fire over the weekend from Chinese press
advocates and others online over comments urging journalists to drop their
pretensions of professionalism and submit to being mouthpieces of the
government.

Some on China’s free-flowing microblogs compared the new president, Hu
Zhanfan, with the infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

“The first social responsibility and professional ethic of media staff
should be understanding their role clearly and be a good mouthpiece,” Mr.
Hu was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying to a press association
gathering this year, months before he took the helm at CCTV.

His remarks, including a warning to journalists who do not take “up the
position of mouthpiece” that they “will never go far,” were reported by
China’s Xinhua news agency but attracted little notice at the time. Below
is a partial translation by the China Media Project at the University of
Hong Kong <http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/12/05/17324/> of his remarks, as
reported by Xinhua:

"A number of news workers have not defined their own role in terms of the
propaganda work of the Party, but rather have defined themselves as
journalism professionals, and this is a fundamentally erroneous role
definition. Strengthening education in the Marxist View of Journalism and
raising the quality and character of news teams is not just very
necessary, it is a matter of extreme urgency."

The report continued:

"Concerning social responsibility and professional ethics, editor-in-chief
Hu Zhanfan believes that the first and foremost social responsibility [of
journalists] is to serve well as a mouthpiece tool (当好喉舌工具). This is
the 
most core content of the Marxist View of Journalism, and it is the most
fundamental of principles."

Mr. Hu, an ex-newspaper editor and former vice minister of the State
Administration of Radio, Film and Television, was named to top position by
the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party less than two weeks
ago 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/world/asia/cctv-chinas-largest-tv-networ
k-names-hu-zhanfan-as-head.html>, and his rise to the top China’s powerful
state television apparatus appears to have precipitated the resurfacing of
his past comments on Chinese microbloging sites over the weekend.

“After Hu took the position of CCTV director, people expose his words, as
they maybe disagree with them,” said Jiao Guobiao, a former journalism
professor at Peking University, told the New York-based NTD television
network <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFeCl5bMBHU>, which is highly
critical of the Chinese government. Mr. Jiao, who has sharply criticized
the government’s heavy hand in China’s media, notably in a widely read
2004 article <http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=17004>,
told the network that Mr. Hu’s comments simply reflect the status quo in
Chinese media. But he added: “The public is calling for objective,
neutral, and diverse media.”

Quotes from Mr. Hu were shared more than 10,000 times on microblogs and
Twitter, the Voice of America China reported, and elicited sharp criticism
as well as dispirited comments from those Chinese who still view of
journalism as a professional enterprise. “As a media student, I feel very
depressed,” read one post, translated by the AFP. “People who are
obviously doing advertising claim that they are doing news.”
 
Many microbloggers drew a line connecting Mr. Hu with Mr. Goebbels. One
user compared CCTV news broadcasts with images of Nazi Germany, while
another asked, “When will Goebbels-style news controls end?” ― the China
Media Project <http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/12/05/17324/> reported.

The resurfacing of Mr. Hu’s earlier comments comes as some China observers
have noted an uptick in the official language targeting the spread of
rumors online, especially on Chinese social networks like the popular
Twitter-like microblog Sina Weibo.

“In the last week there have been multiple articles in official Chinese
media about the importance of the proper handling of microblogs and the
dangers of Internet rumors,” Bill Bishop, an American blogger living in
Beijing who writes on China and the Internet, wrote on his blog DigiCha
<http://digicha.com/index.php/2011/12/attack-creators-and-propagators-of-in
ternet-rumors-head-on-a-new-china-internet-campaign-starting/> on Sunday.

The comments by Mr. Hu, the new CCTV president, that drew outrage were
also primarily focused on stamping out so-called “fake news,” which he
appeared to see as a rapidly metastasizing social ill:

First, [fake news] has spread from commercialized, metro media to
traditional authoritative [Party] media. Second, it has spread from
entertainment and social news to economic and political news. Third, as
traditional and internet-based media have had a more interactive
relationship, fake news has been transmitted much more rapidly and widely.
Fourth, there has been a trend from simple concocting of fake news to
making idle reports, reporting gossip, exaggerating, going against common
knowledge and other such issues, which have steadily spread.

Mr. Bishop, the blogger, highlighted two recent articles ― one in Xinhua,
the other in The People’s Daily, China’s official newspaper ― where
Internet rumors are likened with illegal drugs. “The article states that
‘Internet rumors are ‘societal drugs’…which are no less harmful to society
than Internet pornography, gambling or drugs,” he said of the piece in The
People’s Daily.

“The comparisons to drugs and drug dealing, sometimes a capital offense in
China, may be a sign of an impending harsh crackdown on those who spread
Internet rumors,” he said.