CNN hasn't had a good go of things in China recently. Roundly pilloried for allegedly "biased" coverage of the riots in Tibet, they found themselves the subject of a popular website, "Anti-CNN", and featured in a critical video that went viral in China and on YouTube (and is now part of a running series). At a somewhat more sinister level, the Beijing staff of CNN were temporarily harangued out of their offices by hostile phone calls and faxes.

While the issue has begun to fade in the US, at least until the next incident on the Torch Relay, it still smolders in China. (And not just for CNN -- a London-based reader tells Imagethief that protests are being planned for BBC offices in the UK this weekend.) Now CNN pundit Jack Cafferty has poured fresh fuel onto the embers with some words that probably made for great TV in the US, but may have Beijing bureau chief Jaime Florcruz and his crew out buying fresh supplies to board up their windows. From CNN's own coverage, here is what Mr. Cafferty said on CNN's "The Situation Room":

"I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different," Cafferty said. "We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We are also running hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart.

"So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed," he said. "I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."

Shanghaiist has video of the offending moment, apparently videotaped on a camcorder by someone who has made a lifestyle out of waiting for them to put their foot in it again. And they've delivered. What stands out in this quote, aside from its generally populist sensationalism, is the lack of any polite differentiation between between China's government and people. This was caught by CNN's PR people after the fact:

He issued a clarification of his remarks on Monday's "Situation Room," saying that by "goons and thugs," he meant the Chinese government, not the Chinese people. It was unclear whether China's Foreign Ministry was aware of the clarification when it held the Tuesday news conference.

Either way, it's not mollifying anyone. That Tuesday news conference they're referring to produced the following incandescent statement from Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu:

China is shocked by and strongly condemns CNN host Jack Cafferty's remarks, which maliciously attacked the Chinese people, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular press briefing on Tuesday.

Cafferty said in a TV show on April 9 that the Chinese products are "junk" and the Chinese people "basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years".

"Cafferty used the microphone in his hands to slander China and the Chinese people, seriously violated professional ethics of journalism and human conscience", said Jiang.

What he did "reflected his arrogance, ignorance and hostility towards the Chinese people, ignited indignation of Chinese home and abroad, and will be condemned by those who safeguard justice around the world", said Jiang.

"We strongly demand CNN and Cafferty himself take back the vile remarks and apologize to all Chinese people," Jiang said.

China Daily has also run a (badly translated) headline piece demanding an apology. There has also apparently been some more grass-roots outrage as well.

I think Cafferty's words were cheap and, if not actually ignorant at least willfully inflammatory, especially under the circumstances. It strikes me as one more sign of the CNN domestic service's depressing race to the bottom in order to compete with lowbrow Fox News (the international service is considerably better). But my feelings about quality aside, it's not CNN's responsibility to censor themselves for the sensitivities of the Chinese, and nor should they.

CNN's institutional right to express its opinion notwithstanding, I expect that the Beijing CNN crew is probably not too happy about this latest outrage. This may be especially true of any Chinese staff members they have. Chinese employees of foreign news organizations come in for a lot of criticism as it is, and I can only imagine that their situation has become even more uncomfortable in recent weeks.

The Chinese are entitled to be offended by Cafferty. Whether they're right to be offended by CNN at large is debatable. I've only seen the sixty second clip on YouTube, and it's hard to tell what the overall tone of the show was, or if any of CNN's other spokespeople went to bat for China. But that will be irrelevant in the current situation, where the Chinese audience is hyper-sensitive and the government has made outrage at biased foreign media the heart of its PR campaign.

The Chinese audience tends to see Western news organizations as operating similarly to their own, as instruments of government policy. That's not the case, and Chinese audiences should get their heads around the fact that as a pundit Cafferty might make inflammatory remarks, but he doesn't represent an "official" CNN opinion, let alone a sanctioned national one. That doesn't necessarily let CNN off the hook, but its an important point. As an expression of institutional opinion, Cafferty mouthing off on a panel show is not the same as, say, an editorial in a major newspaper. But it is much more visible (literally).

However, though they might be angry, the Chinese should not be dismissive of Mr. Cafferty's comments. In their demand for an apology, the China Daily wrote this:

Many, assumingly including U.S. citizens, are stunned and shocked with such racist and vicious attack without any cover on a group of people. As a matter of fact, in the past years, Chinese people are getting on good terms with a huge number of earth residents, of different color, different language, from different continents.

[sic] 

In fact, Imagethief would wager that Mr. Cafferty's comments represent the feelings of a broad swathe of American public opinion. You can argue about whether that opinion is justified or not, and whether the media is playing a circular game by stoking that sentiment and then capitalizing on it, but it does exist. To an American audience, CNN's coverage isn't biased. It's bang in the mainstream. The Chinese (whose news organizations are no slouches at casting insults themselves) can condemn CNN all they want, but at the same time they should be asking themselves what they can do to start fostering a more positive public opinion in the United States in the long term. Angry rhetoric and stones through the windows of CNN's Beijing office will not help.

See also:

  • Shanghaiist reports on a coincidentally timed crackdown on popular illegal satellite dishes that allow people to receive uncensored western news. I enjoyed mine when I was in Shanghai!

  • Odwyer's PR Newsletter spits into the wind, trying offer media relations advice to the foreign ministry.

  • Also, don't miss this cryptic and bizarre interview in People's Daily Online, in which a mysterious foreigner is conclusively shown to be mealymouthed and ignorant. 

Update:

McClatchy's Tim Johnson offers some good thoughts on his blog:

No matter what Cafferty said, I found it rather odd that the Foreign Ministry would elevate it to the level of a pressing bilateral matter, demanding an apology. Can you imagine a Chinese diplomat heading into Foggy Bottom in Washington with a demarche about something a commentator said on TV? They’d be laughed out of the State Department. Will the Chinese Foreign Ministry begin monitoring all U.S. television talk shows for opinions deemed offensive to China? Does China want to be seen as trying to impose its own kind of media controls on commentators in the United States? I can't imagine that tactic will get far.

On several occasions over the past few years, and particularly during the anti-Japanese riots of 2005, when official pronouncements seemed strident but not as strident as what was appearing on the internet, it has struck me that Chinese officialdom runs a little panicked. As nationalism gains steam, officials are afraid of the anger on the street, worried about staying ahead of the firestorm. After all, the party doesn’t want to seem out of touch on issues of patriotism and national dignity. So this is entirely about maintaining a tough image before the domestic audience. And sure enough, state TV all morning has replayed Ms. Jiang’s demands for an apology.

In 2005, the party was able to keep a lid on nationalist sentiments. I hope it can do the same now.

 See also Tim's story on nationalist outrage at foreign correspondents.