More 3-Dimensional News, Please!

"It comes with being a rising power," my friend responded as we talked about the subject of "why the West's journalism had such a slant against China." 

It's true. Perhaps this was most evident during Olympics season of last year, when respected news organizations like the New York Times ran pages after pages that had one, overall political statement: as China rises, it doesn't mean good things. And while a lot of these stories were deserved and true (milk scandals, workers rights, etc.), many of the stories were simply reflective of the news organization's own political leanings, often being not more than a reporter going into China and looking for anything that might give the Western media another inflammatory excuse. 

I recently saw a news clip that reminded me of that feeling I had last year. The clip is a reporter in Sichuan, reporting on the one year anniversary of the May 12th Sichuan earthquake.

The crux of the video revolves around the resistance that he receives when he tries to interview a family whose daughter was killed in the earthquake. 

Please don't misunderstand me: I think China has a lot of transparency issues. I am not saying that it doesn't. But there are a few things that make me angry about this particular style of reporting:

1. It's been done. 

It makes me question the reporters role as unbiased watchmen when they are clearly looking for a particular bent on a particular story: "despite repeated petitioning attempts, family X has still been ignored." Yes, we've seen this story. It's not only a style of fit-to-mold journalism that is boring, it's simply uncreative: perhaps the thing that saved this reporter from producing yet another Sichuan story of an angry family is the very sensationalism (violence) that precluded his reporting.

2. It tries to make connections to Communism and the CPC that are dubious, at best.

I'm not sure if I'm more irritated at the sensationalism of it or the misrepresentation. "This is how the Chinese government responds...," the reporter said, pointing towards the crowd of suspicious people surrounding him. Really? The Chinese government? If you take a look, he was surrounded completely by plainly dressed Sichuan locals, suspicious of foreign reporters and how they are being portrayed by the West. If you listen closely, the only police officer in the video is telling the locals "don't hit him." 

I am not trying to justify violence. But this is akin to a Chinese journalist, going into the Bronx to report, subsequently being an idiot, getting beat up by a gang there, and then blaming the U.S. Government, capital G. 

I'm sorry, but we have to differentiate three agents here: (1) the reporters stupidity at probing into a story in a way that is obviously inflammatory; (2) Chinese locals' suspicion of foreign reporters; and (3) the Chinese government. Only #1 and #2 were at play here.

3. It represents an already over-saturated segment of Western media that takes a thin slice of Chinese issues (corruption, suffering youth and migrants, scandal, Olympics gluttony, etc.) and tries to distill it into an umbrella-description of China's dominant political party: Communism is the devil. 

Trying to defame the Chinese government with Sichuan? Really? If anything, I think the Chinese government is giving too much attention to Sichuan. While I believe that the heroic acts of that day and manifested compassion were and are good things, I also believe that the Chinese public at large are so puffed up by a sort of euphoric, nationalistic memory of compassion that political leaders are forced to give Sichuan a higher priority than it really deserves: a full 25% of the late 2008 Chinese stimulus investment portfolio (4 trillion rmb) is being used on the rebuilding of Sichuan. 

I get what he was trying to go for: China has transparency issues. I agree. But why not talk about something else then? Instead of using a poorly shot youtube video of a sensational run-in with locals, why not talk about something more interesting and representative? Like a nearly silent May 4th movement anniversary? 

More than the barefaced simplification of a complicated issue, more than the caricaturization of an already 1-dimensionally-represented issue, I'm angry at this type of reporting because of the oppurtunity cost: there are so many more interesting things going on in China outside of antiquated descriptions of Communism or feeble attempts to vilify a party that is already very self-conscious of its image in the foreign media. 

But it seems as if the ratings-based draw to feed upon already-old misperceptions of authoritarianism wins yet again.