由朱利安

我的新闻事业路线在中国的大众传播媒体今天有一名特邀报告人-亚瑟Kroeber、中国经济季刊的研究为Dragonomics和总编辑总经理和头。 先生。 与我们谈话的Kroeber关于事务的演变压入中国，因为改革和开头开始了1978年，怎么经济报告文学对扩展新闻自由在其他前面贡献了和近年来出现了的问题。 我张贴了在他的演讲期间，我采取的笔记。 我抱歉，如果他们是散漫的，但我键入相当快速：

开始在改革之后发生和开放期间的其中一件事是报告文学政府的更加伟大的容忍关于经济事务。 在80年代，中国政府做了决定那 虽然变法仍然“桌”，需要相当广泛的经济改革。 它迅速变得明显您不可能有一个经济改革节目，除非您有开放讨论。

如此，在80s中，集中于经济问题的出版物涌现了。 有趣的是，虽然这些出版物开始包括经济，冒险的编辑开始推挤什么的信封是经济方面。

在90年代，中国的股市开始离开。 然而，有很多问题，因为股市未很好被调控，导致很多知情人操作。

在这时间附近，在美国学习了经济和财务和海外回来了的许多中国公民。 The returnees ultimately persuaded the regulators of the stock market that it would be in their interest to promote an independent financial magazine whose function would be to investigate fraudulent activities in the stock market.

The most important resulting startup publication was Caijing (财经) magazine. Caijing established a reputation for being independent and of good standards. “They have a take no prisoners approach and report fearlessly on corruption.” However, more importantly, Caijing also began reporting on social issues—–though they steer clear of politics. Remember, for publications in China, it’s very difficult to judge which stories you can get away with covering and how far to go in doing so.

In 2003, when the SARS epidemic hit southern China, Caijing actually published a series of articles culminating with a cover story revealing local government cover ups. This was an experiment to see how far they could push the envelope—how far they could go. If the government accused them of exceeding their mandate—that is reporting on non-economic issues—Caijing could justify their reports by pointing out the importance of reporting on such events due to the economic impact SARS was having on Chinese commerce and international trade. Caijing was constantly pushing their reports further into the realm of revealing the social and political issues underlying the SARS crisis.’

Finally, the government decided that Caijing’s reports had gone too far and sent Caijing a serious warning. It didn’t dare shut down Caijing or impose greater sanctions because of the publication’s prominent international profile

In contrast, the local papers in the Guangdong area, where the SARS problems originated and who had also covered the social and political injustices behind SARS quite aggressively (exposing government cover-up efforts), were shut down and had their editors arrested and convicted (on trumped up charges of embezzlement).

Today, China has a very vibrant media. As long as publications are talking about economic and financial matters, they operate with a high degree of freedom. However, if they begin to deviate from the Party considers acceptable, or if they disagree with a recently made Party decision, they get warned to cease reporting on said subject matter.

For example, in 2003, there was concern that the RMB was being held at too low a value and there was a lot of pressure on the government to revalue it. This was reported on extensively, and for quite a long time—-probably because there was a debate within the government about what to do. Indeed, as long as there was a debate amongst members of the Party, there was a willingness to allow the press to debate the issue as well. However, when the Party ended its debate (but before they made an announcement), the government issued an order to stop discussing the issue—–and debate promptly disappeared. At that point the government had made up its mind about what it wanted to do and it felt that further discussion could potentially inflame members of the populace or decision makers, make management of the bilateral relationship with the US more difficult, and prejudice the timing of the revaluation.
So, that’s how things work in economic reporting in China.

There’s may be a lively debate, but at the margins it will always be constrained by the government’s ability to step in at any time and say, “ok, enough is enough.”

Additionally, there’s a high degree of self-censorship. Publications never know what’s going to induce the government to shut them down or arrest the editor, and they want their reportage to reach that provocative level. Publications step way back from that edge.

More problems:
1) One thing that has become a big issue recently is extortion and bribery between businesses and the business press. In the 90s, businesses would bribe journalists to write laudatory stories. Now, however, the press has such an influence on businesses’ stock prices that there’s the problem where journalists are extorting money from businesses. Reporters threaten to release exposure stories or even false stories unless they receive money.
2) The prices in the stock market have no relation to the quality of the companies. The business press could help find out a company’s real worth by looking into its figures, but China has such huge regulatory problems and poor accounting standards that there’s very little we (the business press) can do. The business press acts as a filter, guiding the public to look at what’s important about a company’s numbers, but if there’s no regulatory structure that forces the companies to put what is important into the public domain, the press can’t do much.

Julian, Cha Sha Bao