NewsMax.com: How China's Propaganda Machine Works

Joan Maltese
Special for NewsMax.com
Friday, July 4, 2003

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.

• "Influence on the rise--China's military," Ellis Joffe, 10/09/02.
• "Annan: China Must Curb AIDS Spread," Martin Fackler, 10/10/02.
• "Tiananmen 'Black Hand' Chen's 13-Yr Sentence Ends," 10/10/02.
• "Liberties in Doubt: Hong Kong," Mike Jendrzejczyk, 10/11/02.
• "China's Changing of the Guard: Another murky leadership transition leaves the world guessing," Melinda Liu and William Dobson, 10/12/02.
• "In China, flood of fake diplomas," Ted Plafker, 10/15/02.

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