In International Media Relations Headlines Matter

Michael Hedges March 3, 2021 Follow on Twitter

In every major news shop there is a managing editor. That job is organizing and distributing the work to fit the news of the day. They know more about holiday schedules, visa rules and airlines than pandemics, elections or sporting events. Bloodshot budgets over the last couple of years means every decision is critical. Without their skill, the news just stops.

Covering news in faraway places remains essential for the big news agencies and outlets. Very often this is their cachet, a unique selling proposition (USP), particularly those emphasizing business and financial matters. Without exception they hire highly experienced multilingual staff for these plum positions. Host countries - even the most despotic - have generally taken a hands-off attitude toward foreign news organizations as unflattering reports are better than no reports. Tensions, some new and some not, have changed that calculation.

China has become a significantly important beat for news outlets and agencies. The country has long been rather mysterious. They build a wall to keep people out a few centuries ago. Chinese authorities became more assertive internationally as economic growth leapt. Internal dimensions to China jumped onto headlines around the world with the discovery of the coronavirus. All things Chinese have news editors’ attention. Said one Beijing-based foreign reporter to Voice of America (VOA) (February 25), “This is where the interesting story is.”

That attention is not appreciated by Chinese authorities one bit, said a report on the working environment from the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) released this week (March 1). “All arms of state power,” said the FCCC report, are “used to harass and intimidate journalists. New surveillance systems and strict controls on movement — implemented for public health reasons — have been used to limit foreign journalists."

The report points to the "China is the Real Sick Man of Asia” opinion piece by Walter Russell Mead published about a year ago in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) (February 3, 2020). Chinese officials were “outraged.” Frothing, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said WSJ "must be held responsible for what it has done.” It is unlikely Mr. Murdoch, principal owner of the WSJ, will ever get that TV channel in China.

A month after the WSJ op-ed appeared, 18 American reporters working in China, were expelled. "In the middle of a pandemic, we were given 10 days to pack up and leave,” said New York Times correspondent Lee Myers, quoted by Canadian public broadcaster CBC News (March 3). Most of those booted at the time relocated to Seoul, South Korea, Singapore, Sydney, Australia and Taiwan. The allure of covering the world’s second biggest superpower is muted. Two Australian reporters last September were ordered not to leave before questioning. A diplomatic incident ensued as they took refuge in Australian consulates before being allowed to leave.

While foreign nationals can easily be expelled, local employees of international news agencies have a separate reality. Bloomberg news producer Haze Fan, a Chinese national, was detained in December, marched out of her apartment by security services. Nobody has seen or heard from her since, said CBC News.

“As China’s propaganda machine struggled to regain control of the narrative around this public health disaster, foreign press outlets were repeatedly obstructed in their attempts to cover the pandemic,” said the FCCC report. “China has used the pandemic as yet another way to control journalists.” Antipathy toward largely critical media led to “the largest expulsion of foreign journalists since the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre more than three decades ago.”

“We have never recognized this organization,” said Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin in response to a question about the FCCC report (March 2). “A self-styled ‘club of foreign correspondents in China’, the FCCC can by no means speak on behalf of the nearly 500 foreign journalists in China, but only conveys the paranoid ideas of a handful of Western journalists. It is a typical example of unfair, biased reports, a far cry from fairness and objectiveness as required for media report.”

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