Media Control in China
Essay Preview: Media Control in China
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When the technology has a great development in the last two decades, the communications and media industry has grown rapidly. Media in most democracy countries would provide a justice truce to the public while in China, most of the Party-sponsored paper would telling monotonous stories. Because of most democracy countries the media is independent and apart from the government, they have the freedom to report and publish. However in China, the ownership does not only belong to the investor. Moreover, journalists right would hardly be considered in China, most of the time, journalists are not welcomed of the local government, the reporting is considered as a threat to them. Chinese government had also controlled the Internet by using filter software “Green Dam”.
China as a one party dictatorship country which does not has good reputation of liberty of speech, has been questioned of domestic media control for decades. In most of democratic countries, the news media industry is considered as a independent legal commercial activities which is apart from the central government. A media companys investors are the companys boss and the future of the company should be decided by the market. However, this international principle seems not apply to China. Broadcast media is considered as a special commercial activity by Chinas government agencies. The news providers owned publicly and all news agencies are owned by Chinese government. The survival of news companies have been entirely depend on the Chinese government but not the market. The circulation of Peoples Dally once fell to just a few hundred thousand copies, and almost all of its subscribers were public entire forced to maintain their subscriptions to government mandate.(1) Also in China, the provincial-level newspaper or even the town, village-level or even the school-level publications, all groups using public funds for subscription must apply them first to Party papers and periodicals, especially national-level publications.(2) Before 1980s, China has not open the market, the ownership of media has been strictly controlled by the Chinese government, The government fund the news companies and manage the market. At the time, any private or individually start a news company would be not allowed by law. When the economic grows and China has open the market, the situation forced Chinese government to consider the economic profits and income. In order to survive, government-sponsored media companies considered in terms of business strategies to save the industry which has opened a gap in the control of Chinese government of new media. Nanfangzhoumo(southern weekend) is a newspaper funded by Southern Paper Media on 1980s, which had a good reputation of focus on the people and being justice of reporting. Therefore different from most of the party paper, that was the few voices could telling people the truce and providing a different view publicly. As an influential newspaper brought itself much attention of the government. In 2003, most of the major Chinese media have reported a news of a murderer named Zhangjun has killed and robbed many times in Hunan province had been arrested. Nanfangzhoumo has only reported the murder case but also trying to find out the reason why could a farmer in the countryside could become a cruel murderer. It had also reported the corruption of local government in Hunan which could forced a innocent man become a murderer. The Central Propaganda Department however regard this news as instigating people to against the provincial government and removed the chief editor of Nanfangzhoumo. Nanfangzhoumo this kind of popular media have been changing the thoughts of people in China and have far more subscription than the party- paper, however, in fact as there could no private invested media company in China, the report has still been controlled by the government.
The relationship between Chinese news media and government is completely opposite of that between news media and government in most of democracy countries. For most of media in western culture, news media as being functions of supervise the current government, focus on peoples issues and tring to report the truce to public. In China, however, with the tight freedom of reporting, the government exercises control over the public opinion. Government restrict the journalists freedom of action, check the report and designate the direction of public opinion. Some of the journalists even harmed when they seeking for the truce and justice. According to an investigation published by the New York-based Committee,38 Chinese journalists were arrested on charges suggesting a state frame-up between 1998 and 2002.(3) It seems that being a journalist in China, any of the action of question to the responsibility of government or report the seamy side of society could causes the end of career. In fact, although the government executed