As a Chinese citizen, I often wonder, “Is the Chinese media simply the mouthpiece of the government?” Whenever others talk about the Chinese media, I feel ambivalent. On the one hand, I grew up surrounded by political propaganda, having read and watched all kinds of ideologically uniform newspapers and TV programs. On the other hand, as I get to know more about Chinese society, I find that the Chinese media is not quite the conservative mouthpiece of the Chinese government I thought it was. I would like to share some of my experiences and ideas from “scoop,” an interesting form of news reporting in China.
Scoop is a way that the public provides the media with news, and then the media chooses some of those stories to report. The public tells the media about potential news stories they see or experience, either by telephone or through the Internet, such as through Weibo (Chinese twitter). Then, those members of the public receive a monetary award if the news they told is reported. Scoop widely exists in Chinese newspapers and TV programs on social news. It allows common people to participate into news reporting and news media companies to report more interesting news. In the past year, I saw the scoop from both sides: as a normal citizen I sent in a news story, and as a Television Station social news reporter intern I reported news pieces that the public found and sent in. From these two sides, I saw that the Chinese news media is not as politically conservative as I thought. Economic interests play an important role as companies test the border of news freedom. Economic interests include direct income, such as circulation for paper media and advertising revenue from audience ratings for television and radio, but also the indirect economic interest that comes from the pressure of competition with other members of the media. Admittedly, news media companies avoid reporting politically sensitive news for their well-being. Beside this, news media companies pursue economic interests. They cannot always report boring and conservative news because few people want to read only that. They are willing to report stories that illustrate social problems while avoiding politically sensitive topics. Some news provided by scoop serves this function.The scoops I noticed at the TV station where I worked illustrate the media’s motive of economic interests. Professions in the same industries like to tell media scoop. Wanting to be more competitive, one company tells the media that another company produces and sells products illegally. Then social news reporters investigate the target company and report its problems. By doing so, the media has more interesting and wide-ranged news. The results of reporting this kind of news vary. Some scoop stories raise debate across the country on a certain product, while others have little practical function.
Some other more socially sensitive social news topics have had the chance to be reported because of the pressure from other media. Shenzhen is a city with only a 32-year history, and people living there come from different parts of China. As “the world’s factory,” it attracts a lot of rural people for work. One day, I went to a hospital to perform an interview because a 25-year-old rural man was in a severe coma, he was nearly. He was beaten by a bunch of public security officers because after he was fired, he became drunk and asked for a ride to a public plaza at midnight. In Shenzhen, the local police bureau bought the service of a private public security company. The local police bureau wanted to get rid of the responsibility of the affair, and normally, a local media company would not have reported this news. Southern Metropolis Daily, a relatively radical non-local paper, however, had reported this news, and thus the local media could not refuse to report that story.
As an ordinary citizen, I tried several times to report news stories but failed, except for the news “One Golden Retriever fell into a pond and no one rescued it. The reason: the owner thought the dog was behaving badlyGolden Retriever Golden RetrieverGolden Retriever.” One day as I went hiking with my family around a mountain village in Shenzhen, a Southern China city next to Hong Kong, I found a Golden Retriever trying to get out of a pond he was in, but the pond was too deep for him. My family tried to help him with some sticks but with no result. Later we went around the village to search for his owner, but villagers told us that his owner was not at home and did not like that dog at all. As outsiders, we felt angry about the villagers’ phlegmatic attitudes concerning a life. While my parents gave up rescuing the dog, I still wanted to help it. “Scoop is a way that I can try!” I thought. Thus I tried calling several local media organizations with much concern, and fortunately the result was pleasant: the dog was rescued and became a celebrity, having being reported! This news was neighborhood news but it was interesting to read. Because it was an interesting piece and did not hurt social stability, the media reported it. In China, it is easier to rescue a dog by drawing media attention than asking the police because they ordinarily do not do such things. Every day, things such as this happen, so scoop news is useful to raise people’ opinions on morality of rescuing (or not rescuing) pets.
Scoop now extensively impacts the lives of many Chinese people. It encourages people to make their voice heard in the media. More social issues are discussed because of scoop reports, although most of the issues raised still do not interfere with politics. Only time will tell how “scoop” will change Chinese society.
