The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has found that the development of the Internet has created a challenge to its rule. The CCP uses its official media to hide the truth. As the truth about Chinese society is exposed on the Internet, the truth that was previously concealed is disclosed piece by piece. The publication of the truth is what the CCP most fears, as it directly challenges the legitimacy of the CCP’s regime. When the CCP strives hard to block the Internet, officials face the difficulty of dealing with the Internet media. The upcoming Olympic Games will attract tens of thousands of Western reporters into China, forcing the CCP to consider how to use more refined and more subtle means of media manipulation to control media and public opinion in order to continue to cover up the truth. With regard to the recent events in Tibet, the official media dealt with it by launching a media campaign to incite civil national resentment against the West, thus creating a new situation. Below is the translation of an article by the Central Party School titled “Urgently enhance the ability of leading cadres to deal with the media.” [1]
Urgently Enhance the Cadres’ Ability to Deal with the Media
General Secretary Hu Jintao recently pointed out in a national propaganda ideological work conference, “At every level, the leading cadres should fully realize the importance of news and public opinion, be good at promoting practical work through news propaganda, enthusiastically support the news media’s interviews and reports, correctly manage public opinion, and enhance their ability to deal with the media.” This requires all levels of the leading cadres to enhance their own abilities to deal with the news, be good at promotion work using the media, and use the media as the CCP and the government’s important ruling tool.
I.
Along with the development of our country’s market economy and its reform and open policy, the style of how the government manages society has changed from administrative management to public management. In public administration, the media has become more and more important. It is an important social strength that influences the country’s politics, economy, and many aspects of society, while presenting a new characteristic that is different from the media under the traditional system.
The media is the means for disseminating information. It provides information to the public about world developments in order to meet society’s information needs. The government collects the information about social situations and public opinion through media, transmits the information, and mobilizes and organizes society.
The media is a society’s early warning tool. Using its antennas that spread through the entire society, the media frequently monitors society for the slightest sign of trouble and promptly informs the public. It has become modern society’s true watchdog.
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The media is the main foundation of public administration. Although the media does not have a superintendent status equal to the government’s, it is an important coordination entity and constitutes a multi-dimensional society management structure with the government, for citizens, and other non-government public organizations.
The media is the government’s inspector general. It represents the public, monitors the government’s rights, lowers costs and increases efficiency. It plays a vital non-replaceable role in enhancing government’s work efficiency, revealing society’s failings, and purifying the party’s cadre troop.
The media is a market competitor. Under the operation pattern of the enterprise commercialization management, the media not only undertakes the mouthpiece function, but also positively participates in the market competition to survive and develop. The media has become an inseparable part from the country’s market economy, and its industrial characteristic is revealed day by day.
The media is a platform for public participation in the government and deliberation over government affairs. In the course of our country’s advancement in the democratization of politics, the public’s consciousness is enhanced through public participation in government and through deliberation over government affairs. However, the ability of individual opinion expression and intervention in politics is limited. The media provides the public with a platform for the exchange of information and for public discussion, and advances the transparency and publicity of public policy formulation, execution, and revision.
The media is a gambling stage for social benefits. It plays the important roles of communication, coordination, and the maintenance function in the social structural balance. Whoever controls the media, controls multitudinous social resources. In order to strive for a bigger leading power in public administration, each kind of social strength often carries public relations, contention, and the capture of word power to gain more supporting strength. Therefore, media becomes a battlefield for the benefit of all parties.
Along with the evolution of the media’s nature, status, and function, the relationship between the government and media has changed dramatically. The government is facing more and more of a media challenge.
The way media has developed has broken the management pattern. The central committee, the provinces, and propaganda media from outside of China all compete for the local media market. This creates a multi-structured and complex administrative subordination relationship for the media. The local party committee government does not have a subordinate relationship with the media, and cannot manage these media by administrative leadership; it should instead consider doing crosswise coordination.
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Media marketing increases the difficulty of media management. Survival and development may cause media to neglect the social responsibility that it shoulders. Its drive for economic profit, may cause it to curry the world’s favor, use vulgar content to attack the “eyeball,” and even appear deviant in its guidance. It is a stern challenge to the party’s control of the media and of public opinion.
The development of networks has affected traditional methods of managing the media. Before the networks appeared, traditional news management was very effective. A propaganda department instruction could get media not to report or print details about an event. But the appearance of networks enables every network user to become a free information disseminator, and the propaganda department is unable to carry on the instruction-like management that it did in the past.
Media supervision of public opinion is a test of government management. The supervision of public opinion is an obligation of social development, the responsibility of news work, people’s hope, and a method for the party and government’s work to improve. The news media plays a bigger and bigger role in the government’s monitoring public opinion, yet the environment becomes more and more loose. The government not only is the media superintendent, also is the object of media surveillance. The government must learn how to do its work under this media surveillance.
Overseas media coming to the Olympic Games brings a new challenge. It is estimated that 30,000 overseas reporters will come to Beijing during the Olympic Games. Their interviews will not be limited to the Olympic Game’s content, and may involve every aspect of our government work and social life. All levels of government can continue to use the traditional management norms to deal with the overseas media, but they must follow international conventions, do well at receiving, servicing, and welcoming the overseas media, and must demonstrate a new image of China’s democracy, opening, civilization, and progress.
Obviously, the government and media relationship has undergone a big change. Managing and being managed can no long reflect their relationship. The media has, more and more, challenged the government. All levels of the party committees and governments must transform their thoughts, improve their methods, and face the new challenge brought about by the new media environment.
The development of the Internet has challenged CCP rule. The CCP’s official media is used mainly to cover the truth. When the truth about Chinese society is exposed on the Internet, the previously concealed truth is disclosed little by little. The publication of the truth is what the CCP is most afraid of, as it directly challenges the legitimacy of the CCP’s regime. When the CCP strives hard to block the Internet, officials at various levels are stuck in the plight of facing the media on the Internet. The upcoming Olympic Games will attract tens of thousands of Western reporters into China, forcing the CCP to consider how to use more refined and more subtle means of media manipulation to control the media and public opinion in order to continue to cover up the truth. On the recent events in Tibet, the official media launched a media campaign to incite civil national sentiments against the West. It appeared to be an exercise in how to deal with the new situation. Below is the translation of an article by the Central Party School titled “Urgently enhance the ability of leading cadres to deal with the media.” [1] {mospagebreak}
II.
As the relationship between the government and the media is changing, the leading cadres are no longer able to deal with media using conventional ways of thinking and management. They should fully recognize the importance of the media, straighten out their relationship with the media, and consistently enhance their ability to deal with the media through practice. To learn to deal with the media, one should focus on the following six aspects.
The first is to take a new look at the media. As society has developed, the media has undergone a great change. The transformation of society and the government has made the position and role of media in social management more prominent. Development pattern requires the media to positively promote the building of a harmonious society. The ruling party has raised the requirements for governing the media, as it is the mouthpiece of the party, the government and the people; it is the main channel for transmitting information in society; it is the reflection of public opinion; it represents a wealth of knowledge, culture and values; it is an important resource and tool for the government’s public management; it guards community supervision; it is the people’s entertainment venue; and it is the backbone of the cultural industry and the bridge for the dissemination of Chinese culture.
The second is to attach great importance to the media. To promote a positive constructive role for the media is a critical step for building the party and the government’s ability to govern. We must firmly establish a sense of urgency and get control of the media; we need to have a strong sense of responsibility as the vast embankment could be destroyed by an ants’ hole; we should enhance our awareness, and our ability and level to deal with media.
The third is to be good at taking advantage of media. It is essential to plan and to use the media as positive propaganda; to supervise and to the use media to monitor public opinion; to emphasize public opinion and to use the media for the government’s decisions and investigations; and to design and to use the media to shape the government’s image.
The fourth is to actively guide the media: through the news agenda to actively guide media reporters; to use news conferences to feed information to reporters; to use news planning to prepare the reporters with prior policy explanation; to timely share the first draft with reporters when dealing with sudden events; to transmit transpositional thinking to reporters through horizontal communication; to use incentives to encourage the media to promote the theme of the times.
The fifth is to learn to treat the media kindly. The news media and propaganda are connected, but are also different. We should not simply control news in the same way as managing propaganda. Government and the media should mutually understand and cooperate to seek mutual benefits. The government should learn to tolerate public opinion, support monitoring the media and tolerate the inevitable inaccuracies in media supervision and monitoring. The government should foster a sense of service, in order to provide the media with sources of information, policy support, logistical support and other services to create conditions for the mainstream media to produce big and strong reports.
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The sixth is to seriously study the media. Nowadays the relationship between the government and the media is becoming more and more complicated. The government should not only strengthen how it governs the media, but also accept supervision of the media; it should not only be aware of public opinion and social conditions through the media, but also firmly grasp the guiding role on public opinion; it should not only use the media as a tool of the government, but also provide service to the media; it should not only respect the news freedom of the media, but also prevent the media’s power from becoming alienated; it should not only promote the development of the media as an industry, but also avoid the tendency toward mediocrity that the market brings about; it should not only interview foreign media, but also seize the right to speak among world public opinion. To properly handle the relationship between the government and the media, we must seriously study the media, master the media’s laws, and be good at dealing with challenges. Thus we will truly establish a benign interaction and mutually-beneficial collaboration with the media.
III.
The former English Prime Minister, Tony Blair said, “Most of our work today, except the most central decision-making issues, involves dealing with the media, whether measured by importance, time or by energy.” The US professor Bennett said, “In modern times, dealing with media relations has been transformed from an original art that can be managed by personal talents to a science that requires skillfully trained specialists to handle.” To correctly grasp the methods and techniques of dealing with media has become the indispensable nutrient for government officials in the world to engage in public management. On their first day of entering politics, the politicians and officials from Western countries started their course of dealing with the media. They know that winning the media is winning the votes. From participating in an election to the end of their duties, dealing with media is an important part of their political life, and is a skill that they appear to have been born with. For a long period of time, the media in our country has been an extension of the political structure, such that the government can direct the media just by using an executive order. Thus there has not been an issue of dealing with media. Therefore in previous training of cadres, there were no courses to teach the leaders and cadres how to deal with the media, nor was there a discipline to provide this kind of training. There was no media-related content in public management courses; nor did Journalism teach how to be an editor or a reporter. These are important reasons that the party and government officials of different ranks demonstrate a critical lack of ability when dealing with the media.
At present, as the voice for open government information gets higher and higher, press release work is attracting more and more attention. The theory training in how a news spokesperson practices professional skills has gradually improved. However, it has not yet been able to train all leaders and cadres on their ability to deal with news media. With the ever-increasing influence of the media, to generally raise the ability of leaders and cadres to deal with media has become an important project to enhance the party and the government’s ability to govern.
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First, we must deepen and universalize "Government Journalism" academically. “Government Journalism” is a cross-discipline between public relations and journalism. It starts with the laws of public management and dissemination of the media, to study how contemporary government consciously and effectively promotes the important role of the media in building a harmonious society. As the media rapidly develops, as the public requirement for information increases, and as management targets and the content of the government changes its way of dealing with new situations and new problems in dealing with media, it is necessary to deepen and improve the theoretical and practical research of “Government Journalism,” to include "Government Journalism" in the content of the training of cadres, and to popularize and promote the concepts and literacy of "Government Journalism," so that government officials at all levels will fully understand the importance and urgency of news governance, and thereby comprehensively upgrade their capacity and level of dealing with the media.
The second is simulated training with the scenario of dealing with the media in a targeted manner. The purpose of raising news literacy is to eventually use it in dealing with the media. Thus, through the method of training in specific cases and scenarios, the leaders and cadres put themselves in the positions of spokesmen to handle unexpected events, and set the government news agenda. Thereby they will experience the importance of the media, grasp the characteristics of the media, and learn the methods of dealing with the media.
Third, we should make raising the quality of news literacy an important item in selecting and testing leading cadres. We should establish a mechanism of positively communicating with the media, and actively using the media to initiate work; enhance the enthusiasm and motivation of the leading cadres in interacting with media; and increase their opportunity to interact with the media. Thus, dealing with the media will become an important part of the work, and they will constantly enrich their experience and capacity in dealing with the media. (The author is a standing committee member of the CPC Nanjing Municipal Party Committee and the director of the Propaganda Department).
[1] Chinese Communist Party Central School, April 11, 2008.
http://www.ccps.gov.cn/dxrd.php?col=161&file=5170