IP: Bull In China Shop -- An American Reporter's Notebook From Beijing

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

JUNE 26, 2002
Bull In China Shop
An American Reporter's Notebook From Beijing

By Steve Friess

The rim editor comes to me late one evening with a problem. Hundreds are
dead and thousands are homeless in flooding that has ravaged several
southern regions in recent weeks. Seemed pretty dire, so I wrote a headline
that indicated that the nation had been ravaged by storms. And that's the
problem.

"The boss says this is too negative," the editor tells me. "Please soften
it."

"Too negative?" I ask with bulging eyes. "How can it be too negative?
Hundreds of people are dead. What's soft about that?"

"Eh," the editor sniffs. "This is a country of 1.3 billion people. A few
hundred people really isn't the whole nation."

So began my tenure as a copy "polisher" at China's only English-language
national newspaper, the China Daily. I was a Medill School of
Journalism-educated reporter with clips in some of my nation's largest
newspapers, yet I'd grown bored with local journalism and yearning for
adventure when I spotted that E&P ad beckoning Westerners to come to China
and edit for a year.

They promised to fly me over and back, put me up, give me a month's
vacation, and pay me four times the average Beijing wage. For all this, I
promised to make the English writing of the Chinese staff as readable as
possible -- and ignore how ridiculous, inept, and often outrageously false
the substance is.

But, of course, ignoring that was impossible, since it was easily the most
fascinating part of the job. Lots of Westerners come to China, most to teach
English or open a new franchise. Not many get invited into the foyer of the
inner sanctum of the greatest totalitarian dictatorship to ever masquerade
as a respectable government. We weren't quite in there with the Politburo,
but we were probably closer than any other Western could get.

Never mind that the staff of a dozen polishers that I joined aid and abet in
that charade by improving the text of this rag to a point where it
occasionally sounds authoritative. We knew the Western readers -- mainly the
foreign press -- didn't view China Daily as a newspaper so much as a news
source that provided insight into where the Chinese government stands.
American journalists quote from the China Daily every day because direct
comment from actual government officials is often impossible to come by, so
I saw phrases I rewrote popping up in The Wall Street Journal, The New York
Times, and The Washington Post.

As paid employees of the Chinese Ministry of Information, we learned by
heart the party line on certain hot topics. The world has but "one China,
and Taiwan Province is an inalienable part of that one China." In 1951,
China effected the "peaceful liberation of Tibet." And the Falun Gong is "an
evil, nefarious cult whose brainwashed members turn into insane, homicidal,
and suicidal maniacs."

OK, that last one was overdoing it a bit -- we polishers often pumped in a
bit of free-lance excess to show the Western reader that somebody on this
side knew this stuff is absurd.

This was "journalism" that would make every Medill professor ill. The
sanctity of direct quotes? None. They changed them regularly, even in wire
copy, and not just because the translations from Chinese required finesse.

Sometimes, they invented people, too. Would anybody really believe, for
instance, that a family forced to move from a downtown Beijing home their
ancestors built centuries ago to a remote suburb is so patriotic as to
accept with glee this relocation as their contribution to making way for the
structures that will help China host a great Olympics? The China Daily said
so.

Statistics, too, were laughably employed. One piece claimed a poll of
354,000 people found 99% said they would buy organic foods even if they cost
more. I wrote a query into the text, noting that it would be virtually
impossible to get 99% of any group of people to agree on much of anything.
The reporter's reply: "But the statistic is most assuredly true. The
commission would have no reason to lie."

The editorial page was particularly entertaining. One day, this newspaper --
representing a regime that mowed down a thousand or more in Tiananmen Square
and then insisted it never happened -- concluded, in reference to Japan,
that "a nation that lies about its history cannot be trusted by the rest of
the world." This was actually in print.

How did we stomach it? It wasn't always easy, particularly when the U.S.
spy-plane crew was held on Hainan and the rhetoric wandered into a
less-cartoonish viciousness. Yet, even in those moments, we gained insight
into the Chinese political and cultural mind that few, including those at
the U.S. Embassy, can access. And I helped Chinese staffers apply to U.S.
j-schools, spreading the subversive gospel of the First Amendment. In a land
where free expression is considered a threat to social stability, maybe
that's the best you can do.

Source: Editor & Publisher Online
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Friess is a free-lancer based in Las Vegas. He wrote frequently (and
illegally) for USA Today from China last year.


 
 
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