Rapporten tar blant annet for seg 59 dokumenterte tilfeller av trakassering og innblanding i arbeidet til utenlandske journalister, og påpeker at viktige områder som Tibet og Xinjiang fortsatt er stengt for utenlandske journalister. Den endelig forskningsrapporten vil bli lagt frem ved årsskiftet 2008/2009.
Report on Foreign Correspondents Working Conditions In China during Olympic Games
Initial conclusions based on interviews and research
Yao Xiaoling: Researcher, SUM, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo
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| Foto: Kristoffer Rønneberg |
1. All the foreign journalists in China are positive to the new regulations effective from the 1st of January 2007 that guarantees foreign journalists the freedom to travel and to interview any person in China without applying the government for prior permission. The new regulations will be effective until the 17th of October 2008. Most of the journalists understand this as a starting point of the press freedom in China. They feel free and safe to travel around in China. They think it is challenging and interesting. China gave an important promise to the world, but China has not been very successful to implement the new rules, especially at the local level. Between the 25th of July and the 27th of August there were according to the Foreign Correspondent Club of China there were 59 cases of harassment or interference.
2. Many journalists complain that Tibet, the Tibetan areas and Xinjiang unfortunately are not included as the free travel and free reporting zone.
3. The biggest problem is that foreign journalists are free to interview whoever they want, but many Chinese interviewees are not willing to talk to the journalists or in front of the camera. And it is even more difficult for the foreign journalists to do interviews with Chinese officials. This also has an effect on the balance in their reporting on for example, the Tibetan riot on 14 March.
4. The international media, especially the big media from Europe and the US, matters to China and the Chinese people. More and more Chinese have been paying a lot of attention to what the foreign media have been reporting and how they do the reporting. However, many Chinese including the Chinese officials have problem to understand why the western media has been so critical and hostile to China. The Chinese reacted emotionally in the Chinese media as well as on Chinese web-pages, especially after the Tibetan riot and the torch relay in Paris and London. Anti-CNN web-pages were created. The hostility towards western media on the Chinese side spread on the internet. Some foreign media offices received a huge pile of fax, phone calls, SMS with emotional and hostile contents. Some foreign journalists even received death threats which made them move out of their home or office and in some cases also hire some extra security people. Some had to move their family out of the country.
5. Generally speaking, foreign correspondents speaking Chinese and who have been living and working in China for longer period of time are more careful, responsible and objective in their reporting.
6. If the western media is seen by the Chinese and Chinese government to be too provocative, it would most likely slow down the process of the press freedom in China. For example the western coverage of the Tibet riots and the torch relay was perceived as unbalanced, politicized and in some instances not based on facts.
7. Importantly in China as much as in any other country the level of press freedom will not develop independently. It is part of the larger political and social developments. Hence, press freedom should be seen as a part and process of China's development and democratization.
Analysis
In democratic countries the hard critics and provocations towards the government from the mass media and the opposition parties functions as an instrument for a better society. When people or journalists provoke and criticize their government, they often get more and more space for action. In China, the result may be rather the opposite. When people provoke a totally different system from outside, you will actually get less and less space to act. So the provocation has been very counter-productive, because it can be used as an argument for not opening up. This is one argument about the student demonstrations in 1989. People now argue that the demonstrations had gone too far, and they stopped the changes for five or six years, because the liberals had to back down and the conservative security forces would dominate the scene. Almost the same thing seems to have happened after the events in Tibet, Paris and London in March and April this year.
Security versus democracy
The security state versus the democratic state or the public state.
When you have security related issues, the security state intervenes, and then, immediately, the space for the public state becomes more limited and the public sphere also becomes more limited. One may slowly extend the freedom, but if you provoke a little bit too much, it goes down immediately. Then you have to build it up slowly to avoid the attack of the security state. As one Chinese official said, if there would be a terrorist attack or anything more provocative, the security would come in, and then the press office has nothing to say, because then security is more important than anything else. When provocations take place, the space for journalists is much more restricted, and it would take long time to extend the public sphere and build it up again. If foreign journalists are too anti-China and too provocative, they will actually stimulate the patriotic emotions, strengthen the position of the security state and slow down the progress made towards a more free press in China. At a certain point what the press officers of Olympic Committee say will cease to matter because security branches of the government will say that this matters for us. Many foreign journalists are very positive to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Information office of the State Council, which are more liberal and helpful. As a consequence you have two different kinds of perspective within the Chinese government itself. When you look at the structure of the state, the security state on the one hand and the public/democratic state on the other, the public state is responsible for development and freedom of competition, of competing views, of the development of new technologies and political and social organizations, but the security state always could define when the situation is chaotic, when something is a security issue. Then the security state will enter the scene. The public state in China is still weak.
