Great quotes about journalism in China

Looking through the precis I finished last week, I've noted a couple of great quotes from Robin Porter's Reporting the News from China. Even though this book is nearly 15 years old, and some of the recollections date to the late 70s, some of the authors' observations about China's English-language media and foreign media coverage of China are still valid:

From Robin Porter, talking about Xinhua's English-language wire service

“Final reinforcement of the party line occurred with the editorial checks on the work of DWB staff. As noted above, news would be normally either be taken from an existing official newspaper or be written from scratch with guidance from senior journalists within the duiwaibu ... Occasional errors of syntax in English translation would get through this process, but errors of line almost never did; the DWB carried responsibility for ensuring that China’s policies were understood overseas, and political errors were unacceptable.” [page 6]

“… fundamental shifts in policy over the years meant that what was painted white at one stage must be represented as black at another.” [page 7]

“The past could be and was frequently invoked in support of current objectives: no fewer than thirteen stories were put out to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, while two others recalled the revolutionary careers of Li Dazhao and Xu Deheng” [page 122]

Kelly Haggart, on Chinese journalists during and after Tiananmen:

"There is pride among Beijing journalists about those few days of press freedom. For one thing, it showed the potential of Chinese journalists. For the first time they were allowed to act like real reporters and they did no worse at covering the story than their more experienced foreign counterparts. ... For almost all city people, no matter what they thought of the students and their hunger strike, that week of relative press freedom brought home to them the importance of more open, more enterprising media. Freedom of the press was no longer a complete abstraction." [page 50]

Mark Brayne on China's English-language media:

"Xinhua is strictly blinkered in its handling of Chinese news. Its task … is to present a sanitized, ideologically acceptable picture of China for consumption mainly by the foreign media in BJ itself." [page 54]

Jasper Becker on foreign media in China:

“It was easy to condemn domestic reporting in China by Chinese journalists as entirely the product of the ideological imperatives of the Communist Party. It was something else to realize that Western reporters were guilty of the same sin, albeit in a more subtle way.” [page 65]

Roger Smith on foreign media in China:

“Before Tiananmen the political story was sometimes a hard one to sell. Any script containing more than a couple of Chinese names was considered too confusing for viewers. What editors preferred were pictures, which China provides in abundance. Hence the clichéd stories; stockpiles old cabbages each winter in Beijing and the new restaurant serving rats in Guangzhou, rosy-cheeked children bundled up for school and old folks doing Taiqi in the Shanghai dawn.” [page 84]

Of course, to get the full context of these quotes, you should really check out the original book, which is available in university libraries and even on Amazon for about $15 new, $10 used.