Retrospectives of Local News- China Daily

   China Daily is an English-language  news outlet ran by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party. I recently took a look at their content as part of another project for this course so the site was fresh on my mind. I figured since most of the articles appear to be written by people fluent in English that it would be easier to examine than something that relies heavily on translation. This removes a barrier that sometimes comes with that territory. Upon my last inspection I found the English of this site to be impeccable. 

 At first glance the Chinese (local) news section headlines read about like any other countries. I saw some about various trends like martial art and egg painting. One thing I noticed that reminded me of U.S. news was a story about an elderly blogger/influencer and his "flair". Another story reminiscent of here told of Universities opening back up to welcome students in these strange mask filled times. Strangely enough this story was more like a narrated photo album, several pictures with brief captions under them. The previously mentioned story about the blogger had a photo album as well but the writing was article length and had more depth. Another story highlighted work by schools to protect children during the Covid crisis. Overall I would say that the content isn't too different than what we see in our own local publications except a few details. Major things technological advances, political news, local/nationwide trends, business news, and more make up publications of many countries. 

  In this case the U.S. and China have similar definitions of what makes news. Now this is subject to change depending on the publication, while legitimate news sources in both countries may report some sort of civil unrest (not uncommon in today's time) there are many instances of tabloid journalism in other places. But even in more professional publications like China Daily tabloid journalism bleeds in ever so slightly with stories called "fluff pieces" just designed to make you feel good, sometimes even about the government or a political figure. Think of the U.S. equivalent being something like Fox running a story about Donald Trump visiting an orphanage or something like that. This would be the same as China Daily running a personal story of Xi Jinping went to visit a school or hospital. They are aiming for positive feelings with easy to digest stories. 

  This talk of fluff pieces brings us to our next topic. Almost all of the stories seem to have strong pro-China leanings. The stories all seem to be uplifting Chinese culture and praising government. There were several stories applauding the Chinese government for their handling of Covid. It makes sense that as a Communist owned publication there would be generally only positive information published about the country, with strict government censorship on the media it's no surprise. They even have a section for "President" Xi Jinping and his achievements called "Xi's Moments". Being that this publication is owned by the same communist party he heads they do a bang up job of highlighting things that make him look like a fantastic leader. Often times people don't do enough research on a subject to tell if a political figures decision is positive or not, they have a tendency to accept how it is presented by publications like this and ride the wave of other peoples biased opinions. The government in China controls the flow of information so it isn't terribly hard to control the flow of the narratives either. 

  This begs the question, how free are these reporters and how much license do they get with their stories? I would wager that it isn't. For example if one of them were to even mention the words "Tiananmen Square" they would almost certainly be dragged to prison if not be made to disappear entirely and permanently. With new laws being passed to ban "posting negative content", the government can basically deem any content illegal if they feel it "threatens national unity". This presents danger to free information, event things that could be crucial like the handling of Covid by the Chinese government. Allow me to put their freedom into numbers generated by Reporters Without Borders. China ranks 177 out of 180 countries on the press freedom index, it's color classification is black which is used to represent some of the least free press on the planet.

Press Freedom Index