A visitor to China may notice that the country's most authoritative medium, the People's Daily, cannot be found on newsstands in large cites. Its sales depend almost entirely on government subscriptions.
Wang Ruoshi, a former People's Daily staff told the story in an article for the Los Angeles Times.
There are a number of reasons why the average person does not read People's Daily, but the most obvious is that they do not believe the Communist Party's propaganda organs. The media's official guiding principle is to focus on the "good" and ignore the "baby."
Consider how the persecution of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia last summer was reported by People's Daily. Anti-Chinese looting, killing and gang rapes shocked Chinese all over the world - except in Mainland China. It was not until two months after the anti-Chinese rioting took place that People's Daily issued a commentary, citing international opinion, that called the behavior "barbarous." The following day, the paper finally published a news summary of the events. None of the reports were from Chinese journalists, which is strange: The official Beijing news agency, Xinhua, has a bureau in Jakarta.
Or consider the chaos in June at the newly built Hong Kong international airport Chek Lap Kok. After seven years of construction, and a cost of about US$20 billion, the whole world learned about the airport's disastrous opening day - everyone, that is, but the citizens of Mainland China. Instead, People's Daily boasted of the airport's great and glorious achievements: the world's most sophisticated airport control system and weather-monitoring station; an advanced 24-hour runway; high-tech check-in counters; enhanced luggage scrutiny: autopilot, shuttle buses; and so on.
All these achievements are true enough. It's just that the report omitted one minor item: None of these wondrous assets were operating properly on opening day.
Had this setback occurred under British rule, it would have been fully reported by the Chinese media. But now that Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong has been restored, the airport's bad day had to be ignored. Just last week, the opening of Chek Lap Kok's second runway was postponed for six months because of problems with the $38 million lighting system. Will People's Daily tell its readers this news?
Not long ago, a Chinese journalist attacked U.S. reports of riots in Xinjiang and Tibet and demonstrations by laid-off workers in southwest and northeast China. She asked: "Do such stories of riots meet the needs of any Chinese people? They are of no benefit to the Chinese people at all. While Americans enjoy such exciting news, the Chinese people are suffering. The journalist also criticized the American reporter for "being more concerned about freedom of the press than about the friendship between the two countries.
