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Environment Reporting
Reporting on People’s Lives
During the past decade, environmental
media have seen a great transformation
and have flourished in China. Now
environmental issues are covered by
both broadcast and print media. Major
media agencies at national and local
levels have special reporters to cover
environmental news and have columns
or programs dedicated to the environment.
In 1993, an environmental coverage
campaign, “Across China Environmental
Protection Centenary
Action,” was initiated. More than 6,000
reporters from news agencies at the
national and local levels throughout
China have taken part in this action.
Each year a theme reflecting the
most pressing environmental problem
has been selected for the campaign.
Reporters send stories to their news
agencies. This media campaign has
been very effective in promoting environmental
protection. Many resources
have been provided for coverage of
major environmental protection campaigns,
such as resisting garbage from
abroad and cleanup activities of the
Huaihe River and Lake Taihu. Environmental
reporting has also played an
important role in supervising and
changing the behavior of factories and
enforcing the law. There are also some
foreign environmental and nature TV
programs being broadcast on China’s
national and local television stations.
For instance, “Earth Story” is broadcast
on a China Central Television (CCTV)
station every night.
Environmental reporting in China
has also seen some changes in reporting
style. In the 1980’s and the early
years of the 1990’s, environmental reporting
in China was covered in a narrow
sense and limited to coverage of
three kinds of pollution—waste water,
waste gases, and solid waste. It failed to
pay attention to the central element of
the environment: people. To clean the
heavily polluted Huaihe River and Lake
Taihu, local environmental bureaus
closed many small paper mills and dying
factories. When reporting this event,
news media only focused on the environmental
cleanup and failed to report
on what the factory workers would
The Web site of China Environment News was launched on World Environment Day
2000. Top-level officials of the State Environment Protection Agency talked about
environment issues with local citizens via the site on the same day. Photo by Deng Jia.
need to do to survive.
In recent years, to adapt to readers’
interests and needs, China’s environmental
media has broadened its concept
to include this “larger environment.”
Reporters pay more attention
to the lives of ordinary people and
cover new topics, such as green food
and ecotourism. For example, to conserve
the ecological system of
Daxinganling forestry reserve, in 1999
the Daxinganling Forest Corporation
stopped felling trees. When CCTV reported
this news, its coverage focused
on the changing role of the corporation
workers from lumbermen to treeplanters.
Journalists Interact With
Government Officials
Unlike its Western counterparts, which
are independent entities, China’s media
agencies are still regarded as the
government’s throat and tongue. In
recent years, the government has
started to deregulate the media sector,
especially in less sensitive areas, such
as sports, recreation and business.
Chinese media have gradually become
market-oriented; even private and foreign
capital is entering this sector.
Even with these changes, the administrative
structure of most media organizations
remains the same. For instance,
China Environment News is
still affiliated with the State Environment
Protection Agency (SEPA) and
serves as SEPA’s propaganda organ.
The topics covered as news are selected
in a top-down manner. As SEPA’s
propaganda organ, China Environment
News has to cover routine activities of
SEPA’s top-level officials and devote
space to reporting on SEPA’s administrative
conferences. In recent years,
China Environment News has tried to
reduce the number and length of these
types of news stories.
This administrative structure also
gives China’s environmental media
advantages. News agencies receive government
support and resources to help
in reporting. The media campaign I
mentioned earlier was initiated by the
National People’s Congress. As the
nation’s major environmental newspaper,
China Environment News enjoys
administrative support from SEPA in
boasting its circulation and has relied
primarily on SEPA to increase its circulation
to more than 230,000, a high
figure among the special interest newspapers.
By contrast, the English edi-
Nieman Reports / Winter 2002 83