21st century propaganda means scripted news
BEIJING — The TV cameras are rolling, the bright lights are on and the reporters are readying their notebooks.
It’s the second day of the Chinese Communist Party’s twice-a-decade congress held just off Tiananmen Square, and government organizers are preparing to kick off an earlymorning event billed as a rare opportunity for selected journalists to speak with party cadres.
The name of the event — “delegates corridor” — might evoke spontaneous hallway scenes on Capitol Hill in Washington, where American politicians walk through a gauntlet of eager reporters and dish out soundbites. The Communist Party, it turns out, has something much different in mind.
An event producer with a walkie-talkie on her hip shuttles delegates, in groups of four, to a row of microphones where they introduce themselves.
There’s a square-jawed fighter pilot who flew missions off China’s first aircraft carrier and a youthful engineer working on China’s supercomputer. A passionate teacher touts China’s primary school education and a farmer talks up worker protections laws. An author declares that President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign is unprecedented in the history of not just China — but all of humanity.
When they’re finished, a host solicits questions. He pauses for a moment, as if deciding which reporter to pick, then calls out a name — even though no one raises their hands. The reporters ask prearranged questions, and the delegates answer — only occasionally fumbling over their lines.
The “corridor” event, which was in fact held in the middle of a cavernous atrium in the Great Hall of the People, is a study in how the Communist Party is responding to pressure for greater transparency while maintaining an iron grip on what’s said and how it’s said. Long decrees continue to appear on the front of the People’s Daily newspaper — but propaganda in 21st Century China is also rolled out with intricately set up, often heavily scripted, news conferences that generate headlines and videos for state-controlled media.
“The Communist Party knows how to play the PR game,” said King-Wa Fu, associate professor at Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Center. “They know the nature of journalism. They need people to speak in front of the camera. Even if they are just speaking the party line, they need images and sound-bites.”