“There’s no specific provision about protecting journalists’rights in Chinese law.”
——Jiang Zhan，Director of Media and Communication Department under Youth Politics College in China
Although media environment in China is improved dramatically in recent years, we still can’t neglect some bad news which shows a warning of potential danger.
Media reticence
Media Reticence is a negative way of controlling the society. For instance, at the very beginning of SARS in 2003, when our people desire to know the truth and how serious the virus is, our media suddenly turned their backs on reporting, remained reticence. This caused the vacancy of public opinion supervision and put a threat on public’s right to know.
As Joseph Pulitzer addressed:” If a nation can be compared to a large vessel at sea, then the journalists are its watch-keepers who timely report the treacherous shoals and hidden dangers to ensure the safe journey of the vessel.”
Trial by media
This has become a universal phenomenon and can be seen almost everywhere. People right now are so astonished to know how huge power media owns. Trial by media is the abuse of power and will tip the scales between the freedom of press and judicial independence.
Amplify the crisis
Apart from that, in Chinese media industry, some media really plays a negative role by amplifying the crisis and provoking the panic. This is probably because they want to go after tall hit and attract more eyeballs. A case here is called “Active News”. It was produced by Apple Daily, a tabloid in Taiwan. They post a bunch of videos with authentic simulation of sexual persecution, violence, suicide, crimes on their websites, and finally sparked a series of protest in Taiwan.
According to BBC Guideline, “We’ll ensure detailed descriptions or demonstrations of criminal techniques which could enable the commission of illegality are not included on our services unless clearly editorially justified.” Apple Daily absolutely violated the professional ethics of journalism.
Given the two sides of the coin, how can we balance the freedom of the press and responsibility of the media?
As a platform between the government and civilians, the mass media plays an important and irreplaceable role in building civil society. Especially in this transforming stage in China, how to balance the freedom of press and responsibility of the media is a bid challenge. As a diagram shows,
On the one hand, as an extension of government’s will, the mass media is responsible for building a platform to express civilian’s opinions.
On the other hand, because of the interference of social environment and the dependence upon government, they fail to find the balance and end up with numerous misleading advertisements, vulgarity just for profits and audience ratings.
So it is a warning for Chinese media industry: It will only cause side-effect if they pursue the freedom of the press at the cost of neglecting media responsibility.
IDEA UK 