Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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Tensions in China's media universe:
between independence and censorship
Robert Dietz
Asia Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists
It is clear the Chinese government wants the Olympics to come off without a flaw. That
preoccupation has led to overly aggressive attempts to control the media. While those
attempts will most likely be futile, experience shows that China tends to err on the side of
heavy-handedness when it comes to dealing with anything that challenges the image of
China as a unified nation with little internal dissent.
Despite all the negative factors I will be listing in the next few minutes, China’s media
universe has continued to expand for more than a decade, driven by commercialization
and the demands of an increasingly sophisticated readership. Many Chinese reporters
pursue stories in a competitive atmosphere that is similar to that faced by reporters
outside of China. They and their editors regularly push the limits of censorship, and many
Chinese journalists tell us they feel freer than they have ever been to report.
That may be true, but in the period leading to the Olympic Games, the Central
Propaganda Department’s censorship machine is running at the higher level it uses to
control news flow during critical party congresses and national legislative assemblies,
when the government wants to stifle all criticism. And, even though there has been a
flurry of releases earlier this year, China continues to hold 24 journalists behind bars, the
largest number of any country in the world. Since China was awarded the Olympics on
July 13 2001, at least 37 journalists have been imprisoned for their work, and 16 of those
37 remain there. But the jailing of journalists in China does not tell the entire story. The
vast majority are not in jail, and operate within a system of well-defined limits, set by the
party's propaganda department - which was renamed in 1998, in English only, the Central
Publicity Department.
Though the Chinese constitution protects freedom of the press, speech, and expression,
there are institutional barriers to the free distribution of news in China. All news outlets
must be authorized by the State Council and must comply with specific regulations
guarding almost every aspect of operations: hiring and training practices, the amount of
their registered capital, where they are located, ties to any sponsoring state agency, and
the number of their news bureaus.
The propaganda department's regulations for broadcast, print, and Internet news outlets
list broad categories of unacceptable content, including anything that “disrupts the social
order or undermines social stability” or is “detrimental to social morality or to the finer
cultural traditions of the nation.” Organizations that violate these regulations may be
punished with fines or closure. By law, all news outlets must be affiliated with a state
entity, but the degree of direct party oversight, the level of financial pressure, and the
influence of reporters and editors vary across regions and types of media. Print and
Internet media tend to have more leeway than broadcasters. Authorities in Shanghai have