Comments on: Unsolicited advice for Xinhua’s new CNC TV news outfit

By: Eura

Eura — Sat, 15 May 2010 03:48:52 +0000

As a Chinese, i cannot fully understand each word of the post. But as a PR student with a strong interest in public diplomacy, it’s a great and attractive article for me to get known about how a western PR profession reads the situation of China’s global reputation management and the value of its central government’s PR efforts. At least, as a person having soaked in such a one-party political culture for 20 years, even though now I’m in America, it’s really hard for me to comment on China’s government’s public diplomacy strategy and statistics in a neutral way. I’m feeling like standing between two totally opposite perspectives towards which polite and social form is good for human beings and don’t know which one is having superiority over the other one. I always keep telling myself it’s a cultural problem. But after twittering with some Chinese twitters who surmount the GFW to get the access to Twitter, I became self-doubted in terms of ideology. Thus, it’s a harsh process for me to adopt an objective attitude towards this issue. In the past, I always thought it’s reasonable for the government’s propaganda due to the developing situation of the nation requests unite the various nationalities to develop economy. But today, I’m wondering after I know propaganda is an unethical way to ignore human rights, not allowing the people to get free information, whether it’s unethical for me to make efforts to use public diplomacy to promote what the central government’s doing to the people. However, from the perspective of communication effects, continuing propaganda-style mass communication is definitely an ineffective and inefficient way to spread Chinese culture and influence the world with China’s perspective. Anyway, it’s a long way for the government and the whole people to make use of public diplomacy in a bright way. Otherwise, another big problem is due to the long-term propaganda, Chinese people seldom have a sense of participation in building China’s reputation on the level of diplomacy, and they only regard themselves as the receivers and have been used to the role. In fact, along with China’s government does something to the external public, there’s a big task for them to unite the internal public and inspire them to participate in the course of China’s public diplomacy, which’s exactly the characteristics of public diplomacy as a newborn governmental PR sub-field. All in all, I like you post and appreciate your concern with China’s rise.

By: El poder blando de China | ZaiChina

El poder blando de China | ZaiChina — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:25:52 +0000

[...] Imagethief, por ejemplo, recomendaba al nuevo proyecto de Xinhua que se instalara en Hong-Kong: este simple golpe de efecto eliminaría muchas connotaciones políticas y crearía un ambiente mediático abierto. El ejemplo a seguir, sin duda, es Al-Jazeera, que ha sabido mantener una visión propia sin caer en la propaganda. [...]

By: FOARP

FOARP — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:27:48 +0000

@PJM – I saw the tweets, wrote a post on them, and then an anonymous commenter on my blog said that the guy had been “pushed out” without actually explaining what that means. I would love to hear the real story, but the only people I know connected to GT left there before he did. Drop me a line at fearofaredplanet@yahoo.co.uk if there’s anything more to the story you think I should know, comments will be treated as strictly confidential.

By: Jason Lau

Jason Lau — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:17:59 +0000

Will,

Great points, and all very true. They’re also the reason that this venture will not succeed at this point in time.

Many experts have identified Chinese culture as being key to promoting its soft power and developing the China “brand”. And Chinese culture is inherently opposed to this kind of reporting that you speak of – it has been for centuries.

By: Graham

Graham — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:14:06 +0000

I could imagine this working only if they set up an organization totally separate from Xinhua, CCTV or any other part of the propaganda apparatus. I’m thinking here something more like the BBC, where you could say there is something like a “Chinese wall” between the paymasters and the editorial side. Just by being based in China, such an organization (CBC?) would probably have a world view more in line with that of the government’s.

But then of course, the BBC reguarly attacks the British government, so there’s no way a CBC could broadcast inside China.

By: Will

Will — Tue, 04 May 2010 08:06:37 +0000

Michael, I agree with much of that. I think the Internet companies are for the moment still too linguistically constrained to be much good for soft-power with any but Chinese-speaking audiences outside the mainland (e.g. Taiwan, Singapore, the mainland diaspora). But I do think that pop culture has a huge role to play. This post was specifically about CNC. But if you asked to recommend one thing that China could to to bolster it’s soft power, it would be to free it’s film, television and music industries from state interference and let them blossom on their own.

But, as always, I’m not holding my breath.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 04 May 2010 06:04:13 +0000

The whole exercise is doomed. If China wants to really push its soft power, it needs to take a full step backwards, abandon its obsession with state-owned news organisations and start thinking more about some of its new media companies that have started expanding overseas and do not carry the burden of being tagged as government propaganda. some even have the respect of overseas audiences. ‘soft power’ and influence is not all about news. it is about engaging with people’s lives and Tencent, Baidu and Youku are already achieving this.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:31:16 +0000

Spot on analysis. I’m working in a western media company and it is heartbreaking/worrying to see the continuing decline within the industry. It is really being hollowed out and there are real opportunities here for a cashed up player to fill the vacuum. Just having the funds to have journalists on the ground in places like Africa and South America would be a major plus for any Chinese media operation. Many major newspapers and broadcasters simply don’t have foreign correspondents any more. China could do so much if it sent a few decent journalists to the same places it currently sends its miners and resource buyers. But if they were the same calibre and had the same editorial values as those currently seen on CCTV – or on HK TV for that matter, then it would be an expensive unwatched vanity project.
I would also have to doubt whether a Chinese TV company could credibly report on the activities of Chinese companies and government bodies in places such as Namibia (the Nuctech trial), Trinidad (the Chinese contractor controversy) and Sri Lanka (internet censorship). If China TV did not report critically and openly on such matters then it would be more like the US-sponsored (an unwatched) Arab TV service Al-Houra rather than Al-jazeera.

By: Hao Hao Report

Hao Hao Report — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:58:56 +0000

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This story was submitted to Hao Hao Report – a collection of China’s best stories and blog posts. If you like this story, be sure to go vote for it….

By: PJM

PJM — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:56:27 +0000

@FOARP As a foreigner at Global Times English, it's flattering to be mentioned in the same sentence as Freezing Point and Southern Weekend, but, hey, honestly we haven't had anyone martyred (yet) for criticizing the benevolent folks who ultimately sign our paychecks. We've had resignations of some very talented staff who are justifiably frustrated with the all-stick/no-carrot management style and one young Chinese firebrand who "resigned" after he tweeted comments by the GT editor in a closed door (to foreigner staff) meeting about his concerns with the paper's survival and how he hoped to keep pushing some issues. Meanwhile, it's all Expo, all the time for the next 100whatever days...

By: Global Voices in English » China: Advice for international T.V news network

Global Voices in English » China: Advice for international T.V news network — Mon, 03 May 2010 02:42:16 +0000

[...] Will from imagethief gave some advice for the newly launched English-language television channel. [...]

By: Christoph

Christoph — Mon, 03 May 2010 01:52:38 +0000

Neat and to the point. Great post. Encourages me not to stop reading China blogs altogether.
It will be a very tough balancing act. I think your points are all essential for making the channel somewhat credible, but I strongly doubt the regime is fit for following through on them yet (and will never be) – particularly with regards to “Cover China for real.” But who knows … I’ll definitely tune in.

By: Lee

Lee — Sun, 02 May 2010 15:05:01 +0000

A great post and interesting discussions indeed. But it’s a pity that all these are not heard by the Xinhua policy-makers, who are mad about multimedia nowadays but believe new technology can help them reach an international audience without changing propaganda content.

By: Kai

Kai — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:57:08 +0000

Great post. Just wanted to pad your comment count in addition to sharing it with others.

By: Will

Will — Sun, 02 May 2010 11:21:27 +0000

@Julen: Noted and corrected! Let me know if you acquire a mini-me or a doppleganger and I will revert to the plural version.

By: Julen

Julen — Sun, 02 May 2010 11:04:16 +0000

Yes, that is what I mean. The channel needs a public that is willing to watch it every day, not just switch to it when there is a riot in Tibet. It is almost impossible for such a channel to exist today independently from the CCP, for this reason and for the others you mention in the post.

PS. Please don’t add an “s” to my name, it sounds terribly Germanic (unless you are referring to me and my mini-me, in which case it is correct to call us in plural)

By: FOARP

FOARP — Sun, 02 May 2010 09:08:00 +0000

Any channel which tries to push the bounds is likely to go the same way as Freezing Point, Southern Weekend, and English-language Global Times – a brief interlude of relative freedom followed by the firing/side-lining of the journalists who were foolish enough to criticise the government.

The people who predict the channel being as being CCTV 9 Redux are probably more likely to be proved right – but, if so, what’s the point of the channel in the first place?

By: Will

Will — Sun, 02 May 2010 08:29:01 +0000

@Julen: Thanks, I think I get what you mean now: A natural constituency for the channel. In which case, I agree. They won’t have one and it will be a serious weakness for them.

@Fred: I know a number of very smart and talented Chinese journalists. The challenge for many them has always been the framework in which they work. I certainly hope the people at CNC get some chances to shine. I’ll be very interested to see what they come up with.

By: Fred

Fred — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:19:43 +0000

I met some of the future anchors of this channel as well as a bunch of other young Xinhua staff a few weeks ago during an internal Xinhua English assessment and was really, really impressed by the bunch. They were almost all extremely sharp, very up to date on current news, and capable of very good analysis and insight into various issues — all this during an 8 minute test. A few of them were back from 14 months in Iraq and had some very interesting observations about that.

It was definitely a bittersweet experience though knowing that this effort is almost certainly doomed, despite the intelligence and good intentions of many of the people involved. It will definitely be a frustrating place to work.

I hope they follow the advice here. There is a tremendous amount of potential and resource involved with this effort, both human and financial, and the world definitely needs more quality news sources, especially while most news outlets are cutting staff. I wish I could be more optimistic about this — as Will highlights so well, a few fairly simple moves could make a huge difference.

By: Julen

Julen — Sun, 02 May 2010 06:41:42 +0000

I didn’t intend to conflate the issues. On the contrary, I agree with your point in the post, and I add mine from a different perspective (ie. you see it from the perspective of the subjects to be covered, I see it from the perspective of the target audience to be reached)

Now, I realize that you are speaking about the English language service. But when you speak of AJ we should not forget the history of that channel. At the time when we started hearing about it in the West(in my case it was around 9/11) it was still an Arabic language channel. It developed first thanks to its success among the arabic speaking public, and only then expanded to other languages. Even today its core audience is either arabic speaking or muslims from other parts of the World.

My point here is that to build a worldwide respected news channel you don’t only need credibility (the Luxemburg TV already has that!) you also need a large home public that will make your business significant, and then you can go hire all the BBC reporters you want. I think a Chinese TV would have a very hard time to succeed in the West even if their credibility was beyond doubt. Because most Westerners just don’t want to see the World from a Chinese perspective.

With the new media and the internet you might argue that it is not necessary to have a strong home market and a large company to be someone in the World media. Perhaps you are right in the future, but today all the real news organizations that do real reporting internationally are still large and powerful companies.

And the only way to be a powerful company is either by 1- being sponsored by the CCP like Xinhua or 2- Having a large public that attracts advertisers who pay the bills.

This is, roughly, what I meant to say in the previous comment.