A host from Hainan Broadcasting Television said that the Japanese earthquake was retribution, and the official released a message to investigate him, suspending him first.
This is not to say how good their leaders’ values are, but because of the behavior of such institutional media, if it causes diplomatic disputes, local media cannot afford to offend.
When the Observer.com video account released this punishment message, it closed the comments—the netizens and their fans are very likely to also hate Japan.
Just look at Observer.com and you’ll know that they are the stronghold of nationalism, and the new force after Global Times.
Hu Xijin of Global Times recently likes to be objective and calls for basic bottom lines, but what did he do in the past ten years? Aren’t these readers cultivated and shaped by them?
This “narrow nationalism” atmosphere is actually mainstream now. Not to mention Hainan TV and various local media, take a look at how the benchmark media of marketization, Beijing News and Red Star News (maybe The Paper is slightly better), report international news?
Their reports on the recent Japanese earthquake will bring together the earthquake, fire, and nuclear power plant in one headline, plus a big exclamation mark—this is the typical style of international news now.
Because they know that this has traffic and is safe. In the current media work, there is only one subject that can satisfy these two demands at the same time, and will be rewarded for “showing the sword”, that is, attacking Japan and the United States, and no one will even care whether it is true.
In the past ten years, Chinese media has come to where it is today step by step. “International news” is no longer objective. No one reads simply reprinting Xinhua News Agency information, and most media do not have the right to interview international news. Adding fuel to the fire and integrating some information has become the mainstream.
This integration has given rise to a special form of international reporting: not for the purpose of disseminating facts and exploring the truth, but to integrate oneself into the “nation” and become a part of the “struggle” discourse.
This consciousness may not be a unified requirement of the official, but a catering to the public under the traffic thinking. In contrast, Xinhua News Agency seems credible. Because it doesn’t need to consider traffic at all.
Conversely, the generation shaped by the media also has a more hungry demand for extreme rhetoric. The host of Hainan Television was pushed to this position and stood at the forefront.
A typical example is Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Starting from Hu Xijin, a large number of media organizations fanned the flames, implying that the People’s Liberation Army would shoot down the US Speaker’s plane, and carried out so-called live broadcasts.
In fact, they themselves know that it is absolutely impossible for such a thing to happen, but as a play, there is no way to end it, and they can only continue to perform.
This is a bit like the Japanese media a hundred years ago. Newspapers that cater to populism and militarism will sell more, which is the traffic thinking of that era, and few media presidents can resist this temptation.
So Hu Xijin’s Global Times can proudly say that he has “won” the market, and it is the readers who bought it one yuan at a time that brought him to where he is today.
How to curb this trend is, of course, a problem. Hu Xijin has a bit of a “turn”, because he, who usually runs at the front, feels the danger.
One thing to understand is that when the worst day comes, media practitioners should not pretend to be innocent, nor should they blame the public for being too narrow and extreme, because you have been deeply involved in history.
Discover more from 自由档案馆
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.