“Freedom is very important – it is the most important thing – but we don’t have it in China, especially in journalism,” he said.Reporters, editors and publishers in the West may snigger at the enforced mediocrity of Chinese news media, but a closer look at the hometown news-delivery system may be a bitch-slap they would do well to heed.
“You can’t write what you want. You can’t interview who you want. And even if you do, you can’t publish it. Working in the Chinese media feels like you are wasting your life.”
How we once laughed when intercepting communist political data in Berlin. The "Department of Agitation and Propaganda" was a real bureau inside what was then East Germany.
Agitation and propaganda ... check your appointment book. It's filed under "freedom of the press."
As i understand it, the majority of news is consumed from the three major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC. They are privately owned businesses intent on profit, and the loss of a sponsor because of a presentation can bring down great wrath upon the head of the editors. Even the non-profits PBS and NPR are dependent upon grants that are given credit but not called advertising. The folks at KPFA who depend entirely on public donations would refer to NPR as National Petroleum Radio because of the sponsorships from petroleum giants and their never doing stories related to petroleum.
ReplyDelete