Friday, June 13, 2008
Article #5 from Volume 1, Issue 3: Your Media, Your Human Right
“Media Control in China”
Nari Corley-Wheeler
To mitigate international concern surrounding tightly controlled media policies, the Chinese Communist Party has pledged to loosen their iron grip on their state-run news publications before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
However, in order to loosen their grip, they must tighten their reins. Recently, local and national journalists have faced mounting charges for ‘spreading rumors’ or violating codes of ‘news discipline.’
Journalists reporting on local and national issues are restricted from reporting news that is inconsistent with the ideologies of the Communist Party. Ironically though, recent intensified ‘crackdowns’ on local journalists has only resulted in an increase reporting on media rights by international publications.
Presently, journalists are barred from reporting against Communist propaganda, leaders, and internal healthcare violations. Sources divulging evidence of anti-foreign teachings, food safety scares, or the environmental crises, are generally discredited and punishable by the Communist Party.
State-run news publications are not taken lightly in China. Journalists forced to quit their jobs report that the news media encourages and endorses fabricated stories that are in line with the party’s political interests and strategies instead of real events.
Acting as the primary media division and authorized by the Communist Party, the Central Propaganda Department (CPD) is the branch of governance that remains immensely indispensable to the government as it actively enforces media controls and censorship. As a de facto arm of the Communist Party of China, the CPD covertly and discriminately evaluates publications for reporting inconsistent with the ideals put forth by the Communist Party.
Prior to releasing newspapers, the CPD ensures that the papers carry the undertone consistent with Communist Party ideology, a sound representation of major political figures, and peaceful foreign engagements.
Asserting propaganda messages to the global landscape proves interesting when contrasted by human rights violation reports by international publications. Slight human rights violations that appear sporadically in international newspapers depict a vastly different Chinese landscape than the one revealed in Chinese state-run newspapers.
However, when human rights violations occur in mining towns, textile factories, or rural villages, readers cannot depend on the Chinese newspapers to cover topics regarding their falling standards of healthcare and their deep-seated inability to provide appropriate standards of living that the Communist ideology claims to insist upon for their citizens.
Displacing basic human rights for a strong and mobile economy, the Communist Party has little option to reveal their emerging environmental crises that afflicts the health of 1.2 billion individuals residing within their closed-media borders.
Further demonstrating their stronghold on the media, the Communist Party has engaged in another way to broaden media censorship – through the internet. In late August of 2007, the government enacted the search engines Google China and China Yahoo to remove ‘illegal and unhealthy content’ within a week of the announcement (Human Rights Watch).
Fearing embarrassment encouraged by internet bloggers and news sites, the government would rather censor and reduce media transparency rather than to admit to their faults.
Unfortunately, efforts to curtail media transparency will become increasingly difficult in an ever-globalizing world. Attempts to avert attention from inaccurate news reporting and methods of human rights violations to combat efforts to expose media truths will become paramount as China is socialized into international norms and regulations.
With the imminent arrival of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China will especially have to make grand alterations to their internal reality for the global audience.
Journalists from around the world will be closely observing the media climate in China and will return reporting an image of China that may be uncomfortably familiar to the Communist Party, but unfamiliar to the international community.
Nari Corley-Wheeler
To mitigate international concern surrounding tightly controlled media policies, the Chinese Communist Party has pledged to loosen their iron grip on their state-run news publications before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
However, in order to loosen their grip, they must tighten their reins. Recently, local and national journalists have faced mounting charges for ‘spreading rumors’ or violating codes of ‘news discipline.’
Journalists reporting on local and national issues are restricted from reporting news that is inconsistent with the ideologies of the Communist Party. Ironically though, recent intensified ‘crackdowns’ on local journalists has only resulted in an increase reporting on media rights by international publications.
Presently, journalists are barred from reporting against Communist propaganda, leaders, and internal healthcare violations. Sources divulging evidence of anti-foreign teachings, food safety scares, or the environmental crises, are generally discredited and punishable by the Communist Party.
State-run news publications are not taken lightly in China. Journalists forced to quit their jobs report that the news media encourages and endorses fabricated stories that are in line with the party’s political interests and strategies instead of real events.
Acting as the primary media division and authorized by the Communist Party, the Central Propaganda Department (CPD) is the branch of governance that remains immensely indispensable to the government as it actively enforces media controls and censorship. As a de facto arm of the Communist Party of China, the CPD covertly and discriminately evaluates publications for reporting inconsistent with the ideals put forth by the Communist Party.
Prior to releasing newspapers, the CPD ensures that the papers carry the undertone consistent with Communist Party ideology, a sound representation of major political figures, and peaceful foreign engagements.
Asserting propaganda messages to the global landscape proves interesting when contrasted by human rights violation reports by international publications. Slight human rights violations that appear sporadically in international newspapers depict a vastly different Chinese landscape than the one revealed in Chinese state-run newspapers.
However, when human rights violations occur in mining towns, textile factories, or rural villages, readers cannot depend on the Chinese newspapers to cover topics regarding their falling standards of healthcare and their deep-seated inability to provide appropriate standards of living that the Communist ideology claims to insist upon for their citizens.
Displacing basic human rights for a strong and mobile economy, the Communist Party has little option to reveal their emerging environmental crises that afflicts the health of 1.2 billion individuals residing within their closed-media borders.
Further demonstrating their stronghold on the media, the Communist Party has engaged in another way to broaden media censorship – through the internet. In late August of 2007, the government enacted the search engines Google China and China Yahoo to remove ‘illegal and unhealthy content’ within a week of the announcement (Human Rights Watch).
Fearing embarrassment encouraged by internet bloggers and news sites, the government would rather censor and reduce media transparency rather than to admit to their faults.
Unfortunately, efforts to curtail media transparency will become increasingly difficult in an ever-globalizing world. Attempts to avert attention from inaccurate news reporting and methods of human rights violations to combat efforts to expose media truths will become paramount as China is socialized into international norms and regulations.
With the imminent arrival of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China will especially have to make grand alterations to their internal reality for the global audience.
Journalists from around the world will be closely observing the media climate in China and will return reporting an image of China that may be uncomfortably familiar to the Communist Party, but unfamiliar to the international community.
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Labels: china, communist party, human rights, media, media control, nari corley-wheeler, newsletter, university of washington, uwjhr
Labels: china, communist party, human rights, media, media control, nari corley-wheeler, newsletter, university of washington, uwjhr
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