Media at Work in China and India

BY ROBIN JEFFREY and RONOJOY SEN| IN Books | 28/09/2015

Book Extract

Media at Work in China and India
Discovering and Dissecting
Edited by: Robin Jeffrey La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia and Ronojoy Sen National University of Singapore
2015 / 396 pages / Hardback: Rs 995 (9789351503002) / SAGE Publications

Experience: Understanding  and Reporting India - Tang  Lu
(From Chapter 7)

Tangu Lu is the bureau chief  of Xinhua News Agency in Mumbai

Why are Sino-Indian relations in the media so negative? This is a question I have been trying to answer. About a decade ago, while studying Sino-Indian relations, it would have been sufficient to focus only on bilateral official statements. But that is not possible now. Political relations are close and stable; officials from both sides have made use of various international occasions to communicate. The trade volume between India and China has reached a new high. However, the common people do not seem to share these perceptions. I am asked why China–India relations always appear very tense and nervous. It is mostly due to people receiving their knowledge of Sino- Indian relations from media coverage. Relations between India and China in the media are seldom depicted in the friendly way that government officials from both countries describe them. For example, in May 2013, a standoff between Indian and Chinese soldiers in border areas received a lot of media attention. But officials from both sides maintained harmonious communication and the “crisis” passed. It is no wonder that the media are often criticized by officials and scholars for hyping news or for being “irresponsible.” In fact, there are positive stories about the relationship in the media, but they tend to get over- shadowed by the negative.

Complex factors affect India and China’s negative media coverage about each other. These include the mindset of media persons and elites in both countries, business and commercial considerations, Western media reports and other contributing factors, common in both countries. Apart from that, there are special factors in India and China. For instance, the shadow of the 1962 war and the Pakistan factor affect Indian media coverage of China. In China, the government has controlling influence over domestic media, which the Indian government does not possess.

Furthermore, a relatively new trend is the interactive media coverage about each other. This factor links to the mindsets of media persons and elites. In general, Indian media (mainly the English media) pick up more negative stories in the Chinese media about India than the other way round. While Chinese media tend to look down upon India, as is evident from their reports, Indian media reports on China try to convince readers that China is hostile to India and therefore China is not to be trusted. When news or comments from Indian newspapers are translated or rewritten in Chinese media, they are often exaggerated or inaccurate. They reflect the state of mind of Chinese editors who have their own preconceived ideas about India and the way in which stories about India should be treated.

A few years ago, one Chinese netizen wrote to me after he read my article on India–China relations. He said: “Some of our media are always looking down upon India with extreme nationalism and contempt. I don’t know whether the Indian public is aware of that?” He asked me whether Indian media report these feelings from China? He said: “I really worry, and just hope the Indian reporters cannot understand Chinese, so that they cannot read these bad feelings.” I answered: “There are a number of English-speaking people in China who can read Indian English newspapers. However, few Indians are fluent in Chinese and that includes Indian reporters. Thus, Chinese media persons are more likely to gauge India’s attitude toward China from Indian English newspapers, but Indians will gather information from Chinese media more slowly because they have fewer people with language capability.”

In 2013, things have changed a lot. As I mentioned earlier, a few years ago, the coverage of each other’s country mainly came from the Western media. However, the media in both countries are beginning to turn to each other. Many Chinese newspapers, and some online media, now publish or reproduce news or viewpoints from Indian media, such as the Times of India and the Hindu to name a few. At the same time, Indian correspondents based in Beijing often gather infor- mation from China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, the Global Times and other English media. Apart from that, some Indian experts who are fluent in Chinese pick articles from Chinese websites and intro- duce them to India. Therefore, an interactive paradigm is emerging.

This interactive media coverage is a positive trend. Media persons in India and China have begun to focus on their counterparts’ per- ceptions and are not merely following Western media reporting. However, because the mainstream media reports on each other tend to be negative, particularly the Indian media’s reports on China, and since mainstream media tend to set the tone, the interactive media coverage is often likely to disseminate negative and incorrect information.

Let me try to illustrate how such interactivity may work. For instance, the Times of India reported that India was going to add to its armed forces along the Sino-Indian border. This would be considered as negative news in China, so we can give the negative degree of this original report a single “+.” However, the negative degree of the same news when presented to Chinese readers may rise to two “++” after re-editing by Chinese media persons who have a prejudice against India. If Indian correspondents based in China write about the Chinese media reaction based on the Chinese report, then the degree of negativity may become “+ + + +” on the Indian media. Since India is a democratic country, politicians and officials must respond to the stories and show a tough stance. That begins a new round of interactive reports, and in the end, the negative degree may be further increased to 6 “+” or 7 “+”.

The problem is that readers fully accept negative news about China or India that appears in their media. Very few people are inclined to question, or able to verify, authenticity. Thus, interactive media cov- erage may sometimes lead the other side to make hostile judgements causing the apparent hostility between the two countries to spiral. It seems difficult to turn this situation around because of the many mis- perceptions about each country are held by people working in their respective media.

Let me outline some of those misperceptions. In China, people do not know that there will be 101 opinions among 100 Indians, and they may consider the view expressed by an Indian in the media as the majority view. Chinese people are unaware that the majority of Indians do not read the English-language newspapers. Chinese people do not know that Indian media opinions are not equivalent to the stance of the Government of India, and they are unaware that the Indian media are influenced by domestic politics and the market. Chinese people do not understand this complex background when they read Indian media reports.

In India, people believe that the Chinese government can control the media and therefore all the opinions published in the media reflect the government’s stance. According to my observations, the commentaries by Indian media and Indian experts on China are quite often based on Chinese English media, such as China Daily, Global Times, and People’s Daily online. However, those media views are notnecessarily those of the government. The editorials of the Global Times are written by a small team. China Daily cannot be regarded as the government’s mouthpiece: the expert opinions are the personal views of the authors and do not represent the official stance. Although People’s Daily online is attached to the People’s Daily, the columnists’ opinions have nothing to do with the People’s Daily. Some Indians also regard the critical views of India published on websites as a reflection of government thinking—if not planted, at least authorized.

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India-gazing: New Delhi in the Chinese Newsroom –Danny Geevarghese
(From Chapter 11.Trying Hard to Be Soft: The Chinese State and India in CCTV News.)

Danny Geevarghese is Chief News Editor at CCTV News in Beijing

How is India viewed by China’s public broadcaster for international affairs? What kinds of Indian stories have priority and why? It is useful to first learn what CCTV’s priorities are in the newsroom. On a regular day, the order of editorial priority is: issues around China’ssovereignty (including Japan–China relations), US–China relations, US foreign policy (including US–Russia), Chinese economy or domestic issues, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Middle East, East Asia and Afghanistan–Pakistan.

News stories from India are carried in the channel’s bulletins, but unless it is a world event like the change of central government in New Delhi, a visit of a Chinese leader to New Delhi (the favour is not always reciprocated) or a major natural disaster, it would not be prioritized. India is seen as a regional heavyweight of South Asia and “does not enter our realm in the Northeast Asian spectrum,” according to a senior researcher at a think-tank affiliated to China’s foreign ministry. This is in contrast to any English-language TV newsroom in India, where China figures prominently and would probably follow domestic politics and Pakistan in a roster of editorial priorities, ahead of SAARC countries. This coverage is mostly limited to issues surrounding the disputed border with China and rarely does one see headlines on Indian TV about Chinese domestic politics, environmental pollution or even corruption, all of which receive much bigger play on channels like BBC World or CNN.

Let us look at India’s place in China’s news priorities. Up until September 2014, no Indian TV channel, including state broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) had a correspondent based in Beijing, while rep- resentatives of three Indian newspapers and one news agency had a correspondent in the Chinese capital. At the same time, until end- 2013, CCTV News channel had one correspondent in New Delhi; since then, another has been added to increase the number of India- specific stories. China employs more than half a dozen correspondents in India who write for both English and Mandarin language outlets in China and report for its Chinese-language television stations. This is a far cry from CCTV News in the United States, where the channel employs dozens of journalists in Washington, D.C. and more than 20 reporters across the country. In Japan—with 127 million people, less than 10 per cent of India’s population—CCTV News has one full-time correspondent and a few freelancers. Yet Japan dominates news and current affairs talk shows on the CCTV network.

In 2013, in the 100-odd discussions on “World Insight,” the flag- ship world affairs programme, which chooses the channel’s top two stories of the week for a 20-minute discussion with international scholars and diplomats, India featured only twice—once on the protests following the Delhi gang rape of December 2012, and the other on Premier Li Keqiang’s maiden visit abroad, which began in India in May. To put this in perspective, out of the 100 slots that year, 15 discussed the United States (foreign policy, domestic politics, or economy) and 10 were on Japan (Sino–Japanese ties, Northeast Asian security, Japanese domestic politics or US–Japan ties).12

Equally instructive is the tone of coverage on Japan. CCTV News largely spotlights the negatives of Japanese foreign policy: its alliance with the United States and since 2012, the issue of the disputed islands. Japan is to China what Pakistan is to India—a constant threat, and a niggling political and military worry.13 So the Japanese are covered with appellations, similar to how Indian news TV channels report on an “intruding” Chinese army or “infiltrating” Pakistani troops.

India is so deep in the recesses of the Chinese psyche that she invariably eludes CCTV News managers; they are preoccupied in their editorial logic by Japan, often accompanied by the corpulent presence of the United States. US action in East Asia, including the 2012 announcement by the US State Department about a US “pivot to Asia,” created a furore in traditional and online Chinese media.