What's inside the media's minds? (By Yu Qixian,Angel)

What's inside the media's minds? (By Yu Qixian,Angel)

What pops up in your mind at the moment? It must be something related to 'Occupy Central（佔領中環）’, right? Maybe you are now reading this blog post in the middle of the pedestrian road while protesting?

These days, Hong Kong is under a massive protest 'Occupy Central', which the locals participate in to fight for democracy（民主） for Chief Executive Election in 2017, as well as opposing the Chinese Government of breaking its promise of maintaining ‘One Country, Two Systems（一國兩制）’ in Hong Kong for 50 years. The Hong Kong Government announced that universal suffrage（普選） in the selection of the HKSAR's chief executive is on the basis of nomination by a "broadly representative" committee（廣泛代表性委員會）. Hence, the locals are expressing their discontent with the interference of Chinese Government into Hong Kong's universal suffrage.

Nonetheless, today I am not commenting or judging from any perspectives. Instead, I am wondering and would like to take a look at how the media in China reports such political-sensitive issue(政治敏感議題）. Are these news being hindered or being reported in a biased way?

First, we will look into China Daily（中國日報）, the far right（右派） newspaper in China. The following sources are adapted from China Daily on 2 Oct,2014.

Shall we start by taking a look at the Chinese version（中國日報－中文網） first?

China Daily-Chinese Version

Regarding the layout, China Daily puts an emphasis on the 65th anniversary of the establishment of People’s Republic of China as it place it at the top and as the background. It implies that China Daily is inclined to the political affairs and stance of the Chinese Government.

Besides, categorizing the news into different sections like World, Local, Finance, Entertainment, etc makes it clear and neat as the styles of some international journals. For instance, New York Times, The GuardianReuters, to name but a few. Obviously, China Daily is stepping its way down to the international market. In addition, there are two additional items containing keywords subdivided in the categories of regions and industries under the main menu. Readers can search for news about a specific region or an industry. This is an ordinary function in the Chinese media for sorting news, as well as lowering political sensitivity by slowing down the internet browsing speed when readers browse a number of pages.

After evaluating the layout, let’s see how they prioritize the news. From the above piece of evidence, we can see that the news about Hong Kong was placed in the middle of the web page. However,when you read through the headline,oops…do you notice something exotic? These headlines only ‘showed’ that how Hong Kong people valued the celebration of National Day, but there isn’t any news about current demonstration in Hong Kong. When you click on those news, there are some related links leading you to the news about Occupy Central. However, they are all objective as they are entitled as ‘港报：“占中”已酿恶果 冷静对话才是香港之福’ ,’评论：“占中”让香港法制蒙羞’,etc. These clearly shows that China Daily strongly opposes the action of protest in Hong Kong. They are inclined to the Chinese Government’s side.

China Daily-US version 

Just Guess if you will see something similar in the US version of China Daily（中國日報－美國網） or not? In the homepage of US version, two of the slideshows pop up showing the headline ‘HK urges end to ‘Occupy’ protest’ and  ‘China calls for non-interference in internal affairs’. From these two headlines, we can conclude that even for China Daily published in US,they are still immensely supporting the Chinese Government’s viewpoints. They are again telling the US government not to interfere China’s political decisions indirectly by the means of the media. Thus, their target audience are patriots to China who are living in US.

‘China calls for non-interference in internal affairs’

Apart from that, I would like to spend some time on discussing a piece of news titled ‘China calls for non-interference in internal affairs’. Though this news was posted in China Daily, its source was actually adapted from Xinhua（新華網）. As Xinhua is also a far right（右派） newspaper in China, it thus shows that China Daily’s strong support to the Chinese Government. 

In the middle of the passage, two external links of news are attached. As we can see the titles ‘Protest disrupts life in Hong Kong, depresses stocks’
 and ‘Chinese mainland is Hong Kong's future: the Guardian’. All these supplements show that these media show a negative stance towards the demonstration in Hong Kong.

On the other hand, before the main body starts, there is a large picture showing Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi（中華人民共和國職業外交官王毅）shook hands with US Secretary of State John Kerry after they addressed the press in a bilateral meeting in Washington. This photo was not adapted from Xinhua but is a primary source from China Daily’s own photographer Chen Weihua. Apparently, this is an example of assimilation（融合）between texts and photographs. 

Moreover, the whole news is presented by conversations. They directly adapted what Wang stressed in the meeting. Conversationalization is used to enhance the authority of the news.

For language use, transliteration is applied in the passage. For example, the name of the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Also, translation is used as well like ‘Occupy Central (佔領中環）’  and ‘White House（白宮）’.

After evaluating the Chinese-based media, shall me move onto something different? As we all know, US is strongly in favor of Hong Kong people’ s determination in fighting for democracy. Hongkongers’ actions are being praised and massively reported in the social media in US, especially in CNN(Cable News Network)(有線電視新聞網國際新聞網絡), the American basic ca and satellite television channel. Let’s have a glimpse of the layout of the main page. 

CNN

Alright, the protest in Hong Kong hits the headline of CNN. They really concern about what is happening in Hong Kong since keywords like Scenes from the field, Hong Kong are included in the Editor’s choice. The news of ‘Occupy Central’ in Hong Kong make up the the headlines of CNN. Headlines, for instance, ‘Leung refuses to go’ shows that CNN is inclined to protesters’ standpoint because the word ‘refuses’ reflects CNN has a negative stance towards the Leung’s government.

After all, there are different voices and rumors arising upon the rise of the protest. Nonetheless, not all of them are neutral or reporting the truth. We need to be aware of those reports and think critically before judging the incident.