China and CNN World Report

Despite the holiday weekend, I did manage to get some work done, reading several journal articles on Chinese media and taking notes. One of the articles was "What does China want the world to know: A content analysis of CNN World Report sent by the People's Republic of China," by X.L. Yu, in Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies (Vol. 58 [1996] pp 173-187). Yu performed a content analysis on PRC-submitted television news clips to CNN World Report before and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.

This journal article intrigued me, because the purpose of these television reports, like Xinhua's English-language wire service, is to promote China to a foreign audience. Yu found that before June 1989, PRC-submitted video consisted mostly of stories about economic development as well as some stories about local politics. There seemed to be a mixture of "supportive" and "critical" stories. This, the author says, is in line with the emphasis in the 1980s on economic progress and openness.

But in the three years following Tiananmen, the focus of the reports shifted almost entirely to stories about Chinese government officials holding meetings and greeting foreign diplomats, very few of which were rated "critical." The author's conclusion: The PRC-submitted clips to CNN World Report wanted to show the world that it was still part of the international community despite humanitarian sanctions.

Interestingly, Yu had his graduate student coders rate PRC-submitted reports to CNN World Report in the year 1994 as well. The emphasis seemingly reverted to economic stories, with a mix of supportive and critical editorial stances. Yu interpreted this as a sign that China's leaders were more pragmatic about the purpose of the propaganda submitted to CNN, in line with China's real-world struggles to modernize.

However, I wondered if Chinese journalists working for China Central Television (CCTV, the organ that produces the clips for CNN World Report) felt confident enough to crawl out from under the thumb of the censors, either because five years had elapsed and the memories of Tiananmen were dimming, or there was a personnel reshuffle in CCTV, propaganda organs, or the central government itself which allowed for comparitively more journalistic freedom.