Wires and Lights

For the People

During the April 9 broadcast of the CNN news program The Situation Room, commentator Jack Cafferty was asked about the relationship between the United States and China. He replied:

Well, I don’t know if China is any different, but—our relationship with China is certainly different. We’re in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years…

His comments sparked a furor across the media and the internet; combined with its misrepresentation of photos related to the unrest in Tibet, CNN has suddenly become the focal point for attacks against the credibility of Western media. This has culminated in protests in front of CNN’s offices and the US Capitol, and demands that the CNN Beijing bureau be deported. A music video has even been made, broadcast on CCTV and quickly finding its way onto the internet, in which the audience is exhorted to “don’t be too like CNN.” The singer goes on to ask: “What’s the good in trying to fake the truth… would you accept it if we turned Jay Chou into Li Yuchun?”

Cafferty’s comments were indeed in poor taste, and the debacle with the Tibet photos is unfortunate. Protests and calls for an apology are reasonable responses to the situation. But the inordinate focus on the press as being an antagonist doing active harm to China goes far deeper than the current political hay being made by both sides—it stems from a fundamental difference of perspective on the role of the media.

In the May of 1926, the United Kingdom was hit by a general strike in which almost two million people refused to work. During the crisis, a question arose regarding the nascent British Broadcasting Corporation. Several government officials, including Winston Churchill, wanted to take direct control of the BBC and use it as a mouthpiece against the strike. Lord Reith, the BBC’s first Director-General, responded: “Assuming the BBC is for the people, and that the Government is for the people, it follows that the BBC must be for the Government in this crisis too.”

Reith’s intended meaning was that the BBC, even though it was a government-funded organization, would remain impartial and independent; the facts would be enough to damn the strike without the government intervening directly. But let’s regard the surface level of the statement: the media always finds itself beholden to another. But what is that other?

For much of its early history, the news media was easily seen as an arm of the establishment, and in important matters, often as a mere herald of the government—the “fourth estate.” The mere fact that a relatively liberal nation such as Great Britain could entertain the thought of taking control of their broadcast networks is testament to that.

But during the Cold War era, journalists began to take on the mantle of defenders of the public. They realized that their proximity to the corridors of power and their expertise to ferret out what was beneath the public eye meant that they had a responsibility to find out what the public needed to know but could not. Investigative journalism, previously the niche of muckrakers, became a primary focus with such events as the publication of the Pentagon Papers and Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into Watergate. Journalists had become crusaders.

But things change. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and continual advances in communications technology, journalists, like everyone else, found themselves quickly outpaced by the rapidity of current events—the news media was playing catch-up. Now more than ever, the first eyes at the scene of developments are amateur ones with portable video and cell phone cameras, all uploaded to the internet before network news even realizes what has happened. Even traditional news channels are relying more often on e-mailed comments, RSS feeds, and video submissions by viewers.

With the rise of this citizen journalism, the media still has the responsibility of putting events into context. However even this role is coming under fire; as I discussed previously, almost all of the major news outlets are under the aegis of a handful of multinational conglomerates. Journalism was once the foundation of public discourse; now, it is quickly becoming a commodity. The number of stories killed because they did not “resonate with a target demographic” is astonishing. John Hockenberry, formerly of Dateline NBC, had this to say:

Since Dateline was the lead-in to the hit series Law & Order on Friday nights, it was understood that on Fridays we did crime. Sunday was a little looser but still a hard sell for news that wasn’t obvious or close to the all-important emotional center. In 2003, I was told that a story on the emergence from prison of a former member of the Weather Underground, whose son had graduated from Yale University and won a Rhodes Scholarship, would not fly unless it dovetailed with a story line on a then-struggling, soon-to-be-cancelled, and now-forgotten Sunday-night drama called American Dreams, which was set in the 1960s. I was told that the Weather Underground story might be viable if American Dreams did an episode on “protesters or something.” At the time, Dateline’s priority was another series of specials about the late Princess Diana. This blockbuster was going to blow the lid off the Diana affair and deliver the shocking revelation that the poor princess was in fact even more miserable being married to Prince Charles than we all suspected. Diana’s emotional center was coveted in prime time even though its relevance to anything going on in 2003 was surely out on some voyeuristic fringe.

So whom are journalists beholden to now? It’s us, the public, in our roles as consumers instead of citizens. The BBC is for the people, indeed.

The beauty of the situation is that it scarcely matters; distrust of our own news media is almost taken for granted. Jack Cafferty is not the only voice out there; and as much as he or CNN would like to argue, he is not even a very important or well-liked one. If we do not believe one channel, there is always another, and another; and anyone with an internet connection has almost instant access to a deluge of different perspectives. Much like the case with internet television, the individual as audience is given increasing agency in how they interact with their media.

But this for the West. What about China?

Technology shapes our perspective, and changes in technology in turn change our perspective. Citizen journalism is immeasurably helped by the ubiquity of consumer video and the rise of the internet. And it was the economies of scale and societal reorganization caused by the Industrial Revolution that inspired the socialist philosophies that, through a long and circuitous route, became the ideological underpinnings of the CCP.

However, for the longest stretch of time, China has been isolated from larger technological and cultural trends. This has been a disadvantage as China must continuously play catch-up; but it has been advantageous in that Chinese elites can look upon Western developments with the benefit of hindsight. This has led them to try to cherry-pick only certain developments instead of the whole package.

This is the policy of “modernization without Westernization.” After all, communist political philosophy was a response to, and a prescription for, a highly urbanized and industrial society, but the CCP managed to co-opt it for a rural, agrarian one. And this can be seen with CCTV and the Golden Shield: reaping the economic benefits of mass media and internet connectivity, while trying to minimize paying the rather unsettling social costs. And, as astutely pointed out by others on this blog, this is the attitude many see in regards to the Olympics: reap the prestige, squelch the scrutiny. While directly comparing Beijing 2008 to Berlin 1936 or Moscow 1980 is a tad strong, the motivation behind such a comparison is understandable.

The crux of the matter is that Americans and other westerners take the concepts of press freedoms, editorial independence, and the marketplace of ideas for granted, which is why the CNN furor is somewhat overwhelming. The media did not motivate the unrest in Tibet; it only reported on it. The media did not motivate the Olympic Torch protests; it only reported on them. The media did not motivate the boycotts; it only reported on them.

And people are not their institutions. Jack Cafferty may be a reactionary, but he is not CNN. CNN may have misrepresented photos, but they do not speak for all the media, or for Americans in general. And when discussing China, many people are quick to make the distinction between the CCP and the people it governs; the nationalistic response they are met with is profoundly disturbing.

On the whole, westerners welcome all the protests against CNN, all the angry letters, and all the catchy internet videos; it’s how these things get fixed, and the more voices, the better. It’s only when voices get squelched that there are problems. In the end, all the rage against CNN only highlights the contrast between the rights and responsibilities of journalists in America, and of those in China. Cafferty is being publicly shamed, and may eventually be fired. But the important thing is that this is all done in the public eye.

After all, the clarion call of the journalist is that the only reason to restrict freedom of the press is when you have something to hide.

© 2008 The Hypermodern.