Beijing Newspeak

Sometimes the cyclical hopelessness in the way Xinhua operates just rears up and flicks you in that tender bit between your two nostrils (nasal septum for those who want to take away one piece of useful information from this blog). After reaching the year-and-a-half-mark, the order of the general chaos has become relatively clear.

The end of July to August, for example, is intern month. There must be at least ten in Dui Wai Bu at the moment and during the day, I’m sure they add up to more than a third of the writing workforce. It reminds me of a work experience placement I once did at the travel desk of the Independent newspaper. At one point, there were three of us lost-looking work experience pups working with a permament team of five. Given the newspaper’s financial woes, they were happy to rely on free labour, we were happy to slap it on our CVs. I enjoy working with the interns at Xinhua. Free from quota pressures, some are receptive to using that old journalistic tool, the telephone. Last year, one outstanding student from Shanghai’s top university wrote about 30 stories in two weeks, a third of which were picked up by foreign news agencies. Actually, her performance served to embarrass several of her senior colleagues and showed what could be done. However, she was an exception. Many interns at Xinhua have never written a news story before but are asked to write about important topics designed for the consumption of the international media. Not surprisingly, it is an impossible task. They are supposed to receive guidance from the more senior members of the department they refer to as “teacher”. But these journalists are asked to help three or four interns at one time and have their own quota to worry about.

In September, the interns will depart, leaving us with the realisation that the new graduate employees who joined the department in July as soon as their final exams were over need a lot of training to write stories in English. Around next year’s Spring Festival, the 2006 intake, who spent six months in Dui Wai Bu learning to write English news stories last year before being posted to provincial bureaus, will return to the Beijing headquarters. They will have hardly written any stories in English for ten months and will need a few months to get back up to standard. In March, the 2007 intake will be posted to local bureaus just as they reach a decent level of news-writing for ten months of English-language deprivation. In July, the new graduates will arrive just before the Olympics. During the Olympics, Xinhua will be a sea of interns …

Within this wheel of inefficiency comes sporadic incidents in which mistakes are repeated at an almost comic level. Their occurrence highlights the fact that, for all the obvious improvement in Xinhua’s English-language service over the last 10 or 15 years, the line of progress has now plateaued and shows little sign of tilting permanently upwards in the near future.

These ramblings were prompted by a particular piece of self-censorship last Friday. The State Council’s White Paper on food safety was given to Xinhua and embargoed until 3pm. As always, Reuters managed to obtain a copy and was able to release it at the same time. The headline of the first story I received forced me emit a nasal snort. “State Council: 85.1% food products qualified in first half”. Memories of a similar story released at the beginning of the month immediately came to mind, which I blogged about here. On that occasion I changed the angle of the story from 80 percent of products made in China for domestic consumption good to 20 percent bad. It was changed back at the whim of a releaser. So here it was again. Was there any point changing the angle only to see my words deleted once more? I suspected not but I thought I would ask anyway.

I approached the senior releaser who happens to be blessed with a lot of common sense. No problem, he said, change it however you like (a sign of progress in itself I suppose). The story was edited with gusto and it became “15% of food products in China fail quality checks”. It wasn’t written in gloating fashion I might add - hard facts were sufficient.

But the first two paragraphs of the released version went like this:

BEIJING, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) — A white paper issued on Friday by the Information Office of China’s State Council revealed that 85.1 percent of the country’s food products passed quality checks in the first half of the year.

The paper emphasized the proportion of Chinese food products that passed quality inspections had risen steadily in recent years, rising from 77.9 percent in 2006 to the current figure of 85.1 percent.

At the same time, Reuters released its version:

BEIJING (Reuters) - Nearly 15 percent of Chinese food products failed a recent quality check, the government said on Friday in a report that nonetheless sought to reassure rattled consumers that tainted products are disappearing from shelves.

Fuck it. The editor in question wasn’t aware of my previous conversation and thought it was better to put the story in a positive light. “Xinhua is the government mouthpiece,” she kindly informed me as if the involvement of the government in Xinhua’s work would be a revelation to me.

This incident demonstrates perfectly how censorship works in my department. There is no overall standard. Yes, the Publicity Department releases statements calling on Xinhua to “promote a good atmosphere” for the NPC congress in October. But, the English service has more freedom and doesn’t have to toe this line with every story. In the case of the White Paper it came down to the individual and her beliefs, which contradicted those of her superior. Another editor would have passed the original story through and all the other state English-language media would probably have followed with “15 percent bad”. I was interested to hear recently that someone had suggested to the releasers they should read this blog to be aware of a few censorship issues. I think this might have backfired. After all, no one wants to be preached to by a 26-year-old English bloke with a few years’ journalistic experience.

Oh well, I can’t say I didn’t chuckle. Does it really matter? Well, actually, from a state media credibility point of view, I believe it does. Particularly when my colleagues from the economics desk were also swearing at their computer screens when White Paper ”stories” began to trickle through from the Domestic News Desk. Unlike them I can take the easy way out and go on holiday - I am going back to the UK until the beginning of September. Consumer warning: there is only one polisher for 50 or 60 Xinhua stories each day in my absence. Donations welcome.