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Reporting of May 2008 earthquake in China - Tom Plate
China's tragic earthquake
While the Chinese media often deserves censure, its post-earthquake reporting warrants commendation, writes Tom Plate
By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Los Angeles --- The American news media, for many good reasons, has been much under attack. The list of its sins and shortcomings is almost too extensive to be contained within a short column like this. We won't even mention its generally limpid illumination of the true facts about Saddam Hussein's mass-destructive capabilities prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the U.S. news media does have saving graces, and to some extent those qualities -- excesses notwithstanding -- are the envy of that part of the rest of the world (which is most of it) that does not have them.
For Japan, which otherwise nurtures a vigorous news media, a deeply embarrassing and unforgettable moment came when Keizo Obuchi, then prime minister, disappeared for an unreported 22 hours. This was over a weekend in April 2000, and the press corps assigned to the prime minister's office foolishly accepted the assurances of the PM's official spokesmen that the hard-working PM was "studying policy."
In fact, he was enduring a very tragic stroke (which in the end -- six weeks later -- was to end his life). Before anyone in the press or public knew what was happening, the ruling government coalition was picking a new prime minister while the allegedly conscious one was still studying. This was not Japan's finest press hour.
By contrast, China's news media has offered many more inglorious moments, to be sure. Perhaps the crowning moment of the media's overnight disappearance came in 1976, when reports about the massive 7.9 Tangshan earthquake were all but snuffed out by Chinese propaganda authorities. Years went by before the full details were made public.
Even today, the Chinese news media is not what it should be. And the country's journalists themselves know that. A well-respected mainland journalist, when asked to be a guest at my media class at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), declined the honor on the ground that "I am not yet proud of our media."
Even so, all real journalists -- anywhere, everywhere -- have it in their skin to want to tell the whole true story. Because of this embedded trait, even Chinese journalism has its stellar moments. One came in 1989, during the initial student protests leading up to the Tiananmen Square disaster. Until propaganda ministry officials plowed into the news-media like a Stalinist bulldozer removing a cornfield, the Chinese news media did a very creditable job telling the people what was actually going on. But then they were ordered to shut up and revert to the official party line. They did -- they had to.
That was also the case a few years back with the outbreak of the SARS epidemic. Slow reporting triggered more rapid disease transmission. All the serious Chinese journalists were left holding their heads in shame. In effect, the institution of the mass-communication of news, because it was not allowed to do its job, contributed to the enormity of the SARS toll.
But this week, delightfully, we have a happier story for you. The Chinese news media is showing its crusading pre-Tiananmen traits. Editors and reporters have bravely ignored initial official restrictions and trekked to Sichuan Province, which was ground zero for the massive quake (also 7.9), to see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears what was happening.
Today, the world is witnessing another productive up-tick in post-war Chinese media history. The work of the Chinese news media in getting word out to the world about the terrible earthquake disaster has been all but heroic. But it has been somewhat aided and abetted by the government, which this time decided to butt out and let the journalists do their thing.
It is generally the case that when the government butts out, the true story gets out; and often having the true story in front of one's eyes benefits not only the people but the government itself. That's because governments sometimes do a poor job at serving as the eyes and ears of the people; even putatively democratic governments are not always best in a crisis (see: U.S.A./Katrina/2005). They often need the news-media to give them a good kick in the pants to wake them up.
It's true that the oft-maligned Chinese news-media often merits being oft-maligned. But right now it is out in the field, more or less doing its job, reporting the truth. To be sure, the new technologies of instant transmission make governmental control more difficult. But at the same time even the Chinese government seems to have accepted, in part and if only for now, the transparent value of getting the word out.
Governments, aid agencies and private concerns all over the world are pitching in to help the recovery efforts. The world's heart had been opening up to China. In part this is because the Chinese media, for once, has been permitted to tell the world as well as its own people what precisely is going on -- and right now, not pointless years later.
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