Picture this.  A top official of a powerful state newspaper stands before a room of journalism students and flatly admits that their government has been lying to them, changing facts in the news or omitting them altogether.  The hero of a dystopian novel?  A whistle-blower who’s had enough?

Just the opposite.  Xia Lin, the deputy editor-in-chief of Xinhua, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, was giving a lecture entitled “Understanding Journalistic Protocols for Covering Breaking News” at the Tianjin Foreign Studies University in which he defended the practice of massaging the truth when it comes to news, citing the critical role of media to maintain societal stability.  The examples he gave were shocking, but only confirmed what most skeptical human beings believe: that their government lies to them on a daily basis.

All the news that's fit to print.

Lin recounted the “live broadcast” of the Shenzhou 5 landing, in which Chinese viewers saw astronaut Yang Liwei emerge from the space capsule smiling and flashing a victory symbol.  But actually when the capsule was opened Yang had blood all over his face due to a cut on his lip.  Workers wiped the blood off his face and shot the second reveal for the country to see.  Lin also mentioned the “July 5th incident” in Xinjiang when state media underreported Han deaths for fear of mob reprisal and, when the reprisal happened anyway, omitted mention of Uighur casualties.

The revelations are startling not because of the obvious fact that news in China is manufactured, but that its top officials are unrepentant about it.  In fact, they see careful management, or manipulation, of the truth as not only justified but integral to their job.  Reporting is not in the service of facts but rather facts serve reporting, and can be airbrushed and edited to benefit those in power.

Though this seems immoral and propagandistic, there are two cultural factors that contextualize the government’s mentality.   First is the Chinese preoccupation with face, and no one is more vain than the government.  Chinese leaders, from emperors to demagogues to its current politicians, have always taken pains to appear irreproachable and by now it has become a part of the fiction.  Every misstep is seen as potential ammunition for those who might want to challenge the incumbent power.  Thus, mistakes are admitted only posthumously, for fear of damaging the reputations or political fortunes of those still alive.

Second, the Chinese government is willing to sacrifice much for stability: ideals, lives, even fundamental tenets of their own party ideology.  If they are willing to abandon their own beliefs for stability, then why shouldn’t every branch of the government, including the media, the military, and the legal system, be used toward that end?

Recently, one can see their point.  In March, the state media reported the first of what has now become a rash of kindergarten stabbings.  Likewise, the reports of factory suicides in Shenzhen have led to nothing but more suicides and a belated pay increase.  If suppressing the news of that first stabbing could have saved the lives of children who died in subsequent attacks, wouldn’t we all think twice?  But denial of death is on some level a negation of life.  Not reporting the deaths of those children would mean they died for nothing and would be an affront to their memory and the grief of their families.  And yet, what is the point in honoring death when it only leads to more of the same?  Truth is lofty and eternal; lives are earthly and transient.  How does one weigh the two?

We can’t.  And maybe we don’t have to, because the news itself is not as important as how we act in response to it.  If we look for easy answers to tragedies, then those who died did so in vain.  If we settle for easy explanations—the killers were mentally ill; the young people who jumped from buildings were heartbroken—then we should not be surprised if these things continue to happen and have one to blame for their proliferation but ourselves.

The furor over the factory suicides have made amounted to some small victories—a pay increase at Foxconn and in Beijing—and has raised awareness of issues like poor factory conditions, the growing income gap, and the dark side of economic development.  However, the response to the epidemic of kindergarten stabbings has been and will continue to be characteristically simple.  The murderers responsible for the stabbings will be executed.  Their point of view will not be reported.  Their reasoning will be lost along with their lives and we will get no closer to knowing, let alone understanding, what would drive them to take the lives of defenseless children.  Even if we are reluctant to understand their reasons, aren’t they the most important piece of this puzzle?

The worst thing about edited news is not the deception or the misinformation—it is the lack of information.  Information that can help us prevent further incidents.  Information we can use to ensure long-term stability, instead of settling for short respites.  Instead of knowing less about these tragedies, we need to know more.  We need to know, truly, why these things happened, because only then can we ask the right questions, the hard questions.  And though we might not like the answers, at least they’d be honest.  People want the truth; the government just needs to believe that they can handle it.

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Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/asia/04china.html
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/06/xia-lin-夏林-xinhua-deputy-chief-editor-reveals-secret-details-of-old-news-stories/