Managing the Media

June 4: Censors working overtime

July 2004 - On June 4th itself no major incidents were recorded apart from photographers being briefly detained and asked to delete pictures of protests and arrests they shot. CNN and BBC stories on the anniversary were repeatedly blocked, and CNN’s caption bar at the bottom of the screen was blacked out whenever anniversary-related remarks appeared. BBC was even threatened ahead of time, with calls to their sales arm in Hong Kong warning them to avoid Tiananmen reports so as to not risk their potential market in China.

That said and done, and with all the super high-tech control rooms censors have these days, the little guy responsible for monitoring the satellite transmissions was actually able to bring June 4th reports back to life at the exact instant where the government position was heard.

BOC shows R-E-S-P-E-C-T

July 2004 - Foreign journalists whose beat includes coverage of the Bank of China's fitful efforts to meet international banking standards have been left scratching their heads about the attitude of senior management toward appropriate terms of address at press conferences.

After a press conference in April, a representative of what passes for the bank's public relations office got an earful after taking questions from foreign journos with the rather offhand reference to "the lao wai in the front/back," etc. A month later, the same BOC representative opened a press conference with an apology for using “inappropriate terms" for foreign journalists. Case closed? Er, not quite... The BOC executive who helmed the presser followed up that apology with a long-winded and downright bizarre monologue on why such an apology was unnecessary. His rationale? "Lao wai," like the more frightful "gui zi" for Japanese, are "old" terms that in his learned opinion have long been denuded of any pejorative connotation.

Considering this comes from a senior executive for a bank preparing for a possible listing on either the Hong Kong or U.S. stock exchange, some crash re-education might be in order...

Bank presser turns ugly

September 2004 - Correspondents covering Bank of China press conferences who've gotten used to the sneering asides of senior bank executives and their childishly pedantic public criticisms of journos' Chinese grammar have got a new burden to bear: burly plainclothes "security" personnel with a penchant for trying to pick punch-ups with foreign reporters.

At a presser at BOC's Beijing HQ August 26, a foreign correspondent who was part of the scrum around central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan as he made his exit found himself body slammed out of the pack - domestic journalists were ignored. When said correspondent had the temerity to push back, the burly guard redoubled his efforts and slapped the reporter's tape recorder out of his hand for good measure.

The guard then beckoned that he was ready for an escalation of hostilities, but cooler heads - or rather a phalanx of horrified bystanders - intervened. The irony that such unacceptable behavior occurred at a presser to laud the launch of a new, improved BOC shareholding bank aspiring to "international standards" was not lost on attendees.

Authorities enforce rules ... when it suits them

September 2004 - Many a China-based correspondent has tales to tell about being detained and made to write a self-criticism. A couple of our colleagues, detained on August 30 while covering the unfurling of a "Free Tibet" banner in the Ethnic Minorities Park by two foreign activists, aren’t taking it sitting down.

The two have written letters of complaint about their treatment to Foreign Ministry Spokesman Kong Quan, IOC President Jacques Rogge, the European Commission, their respective ambassadors, IPC Director He Yin and Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee. They say their editors are very concerned and will inform the Vienna-based International Press Institute.

In the letter to Kong Quan, they said what happened amounts to unfair harassment and intimidation. They asked for clarification about whether the foreign ministry really expects every correspondent to get permission from the foreign ministry every time he or she interviews passersby or even foreigners within China. And they complain that the PSB officers who detained them confiscated and rendered useless their camera’s memory stick – and refused to give a receipt for it. They reminded Kong Quan that Wang Wei, the former secretary general of the Beijing Olympic bid committee, had said when Beijing was campaigning for the 2008 games that "the world media will enjoy full freedom to report on all aspects of China if the Olympic Games are held in Beijing."

"Illegal reporting" and other facts of life

October 2004 - As if the regulation that all interviews are supposed to be approved beforehand by ‘the relevant authorities,’ some officials seem to be interpreting the rule in an extremely expansive way. One correspondent was told recently that having lunch with petitioners who had come to Beijing was breaking the rules because “chatting is also interviewing (and interviewing without advance permission is illegal).” A cameraman was slapped on the wrist for driving by a university because “looking is also interviewing.” And – uh – what does that leave?

State Council pressers "too crowded"?

October 2004 - Local Chinese employees of foreign correspondents have been feeling another sort of squeeze. The State Council Information Office has rolled out a new photo I.D. pass for their news conferences that explicitly excludes Chinese working for foreign news organizations. The rationale? They said State Council pressers were becoming “too crowded”…though it would have been appreciated if they’d instead culled from the crowd such papers as the China Plastics Weekly, who arrive early to tuck in on the complimentary refreshments, snooze or schmooze through the first half of the presser then nip out for an early lunch before going back to the office to type up the official press release.

Security agents rough up reporters at South Korean legislators’ presser

February 2005 - The FCCC and a Japanese journalists group in Beijing have both sent letters of complaint to the Foreign Ministry over the rough handling of reporters by security agents trying to break up a news conference at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel in January.

About 30 journalists showed up to cover the presser by the South Korean parliamentarians who were to discuss the issue of North Korean refugees. As things were getting under way, men in suits who refused to identify themselves turned the power off in the conference room and tried to kick everyone out, saying the meeting was illegal because the organizers did not have proper papers from the Foreign Ministry’s information department. Asked repeatedly by reporters and the South Korean lawmakers to identify themselves, the men (who, of course, turned out to be security agents – police by one account, perhaps actually MSS) refused, saying they did not need to say.

With the power in the room out, some cameramen tried to film with lights, but the agents stopped them by pulling their cameras down. Same went for photographers snapping flash pictures. Several journalists were forcibly removed from the conference room by the mystery men, who declined to say who they worked for. AP photographer Ng Han Guan was punched on the head while being dragged out of the room by several of the men. (Yes, that’s the same Ng Han Guan who required stitches after being hit on the head by a plainclothes security agent at the Asian Cup soccer final. And, no, that attacker, despite being identified and photographed by Ng since, has not been brought to justice.)

The Foreign Ministry’s Kong Quan later supported the actions of the mystery security agents, saying the Koreans had not come to China for friendly reasons. He did say, however, that it should be standard practice for police and security agents to identify themselves when enforcing the law.

The FCCC sent a letter to Kong Quan, expressing its “displeasure and unease” at the rough handling of reporters. “This type of aggressive, violent behavior doesn’t meet international norms and is damaging to China’s image in the eyes of the world,” the letter said. The FCCC asked that the incident be investigated to determine who was responsible, saying such a process would help prevent future incidents and build confidence. We have yet to hear back.

China blocks coverage of Zhao Ziyang’s death

February 2005 - If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears, does it make a sound? Apparently that’s what the leadership was testing with the death of Zhao Ziyang – to the extent that it could. Handling the passing of the Communist Party chief who wept before students in Tiananmen Square on May 19, 1989, when he knew it was too late to stop the army from ending the protests, was highly sensitive.

The party kept news coverage in China to a bare minimum, issuing a one line Xinhua item when he died on Jan. 17, and a small obituary noting his “serious mistakes” in 1989 after he was cremated. Reporters who looked foreign or were carrying cameras were kept away from his home, although a few Asian journalists were able to sneak in. And even most correspondents with invitations from the Zhao family to attend the scaled-back funeral at Babaoshan were turned away by security forces – who were posted at tight intervals for kilometers along the road to the cemetery.

In hotels, foreign newspapers with stories on Zhao’s life and death arrived late. And obituaries and other reports on CNN and the BBC were – predictably – blacked out. But some Chinese still chose to express their grief on the internet, along with some anger about how a former Chinese leader had been treated. Their messages were removed within minutes after being posted – but the point was made – Zhao had not been completely forgotten, and the issues surrounding his fall from power are far from dead.

The NPC, planted questions and blank screens

March 2005 - The word from Premier Wen Jiabao at the opening of this year’s National People’s Congress was that China should open up even further to the outside world. But when it comes to managing the news media, old habits die hard.

The NPC coincided with the BBC’s special “China week” – so, not only were e-mail and internet access sluggish, but television screens also routinely went blank when sensitive topics came up on the BBC. (Interestingly, the growing number of Chinese who have illegal satellite dishes could watch uninterrupted; only foreigners and others living in buildings with ‘official’ access – in other words, those who could most easily get the information elsewhere – were subjected to these irritating interruptions.)

At least the censors seem to be getting more sophisticated. In a BBC piece on Xinjiang, they allowed shots of Uighers worshipping in a mosque, and of Uighur students doing patriotic exercises – but abruptly cut to black when Rupert Wingfield-Hayes said that Uighurs don’t much like Han Chinese.

The stage management continued in Premier Wen’s end-of-NPC news conference on March 14. “Today, I am here at this press conference, ready to answer your questions,” he said. “I’ll speak from my heart. I’m neither nervous nor afraid.” Why should he be afraid, when he knew in advance what all the questions would be? Foreign and, presumably, local correspondents were called in advance and asked if they’d like to ask a question and, if so, what. Those with acceptable questions were escorted to reserved seats at the front of the hall. Organizers made a big show of Premier Wen’s generosity in extending the news conference by 20 minutes, and then taking three more questions even after that. Amazing, then, that for one of the last questions, about China’s relations with India, Wen was able to quote exactly from an obscure, ancient Indian Upanishad text.

Even with all the advance scripting, the censors still weren’t satisfied. The official record of the news conference, published in China’s official media, left out a couple of key points. One was when Premier Wen said he thought history would “render a fair verdict” on outgoing Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa. The other was when, talking about China’s new anti-secession law, Wen referred to the US anti-secession law of 1861. The part cut from the official record was when Wen said, "And after that happened, the war between the North and the South broke out. We do not wish to see that kind of outcome. We do not wish to see that kind of outcome."

New York Times correspondent Joe Kahn, who caught these omissions, wrote, “It is possible that it was decided that the American law's failure to stop the Civil War undermined the rationale for passing their own law… Political analysts in Beijing said authorities might also have felt that it was inappropriate for the prime minister to be on record plaintively bemoaning the possibility of conflict with Taiwan when the official line is that China "will pay any price" to ensure the unity of the nation.” Hard to know for sure why the cuts were made, Kahn says, because the news office of China’s cabinet, which Premier Wen heads, didn’t respond to a written request for comment.

Nothing Going on Here ...

March 2005 - The friendly PSB liason for foreign correspondents, Liu Jingguan, bounced at least three foreign news organizations from Beijing city hall on Zhengyi Lu on Feb. 28 for trying to interview former SARS patients. The subjects had come to request compensation for long-term side effects of steroids they received for their illness in 2003.

‘Care for a Coffee?’

May 2005 - Seems a number of Chinese news assistants of foreign correspondents have been asked this in recent weeks, by our friends in public security. One was asked to meet her interrogators at their car, outside the Friendship Store Starbucks. (But she was allowed to leave her trench coat at home.) She was surprised to see that they looked almost hip – young, shaggy haired, dressed in youth chic – exactly the type who could blend in in, say, an anti-Japanese demonstration. They were very interested in what kinds of stories her boss had been doing, and whether he, in fact, was doing much on the anti-Japanese demonstrations. She finally asked, “Do you think he’s a spy?” “No,” one of the interrogators replied. “We know he’s not a spy. But there are others here who are.”
They also mentioned – interestingly – that they weren’t so concerned about unofficial reporting trips outside Beijing. “Yeah, we used to monitor that, but we don’t anymore,” one of them said. So that just leaves the provincial PSBs to worry about…
And, of course, there’s also the possibility of getting another call for coffee.