Score another scoop for ““Focus Report,’’ a prime-time nightly news-magazine show that is rewriting the rules of Chinese TV journalism. In its four-year run, the show has won a huge audience for its increasingly bold investigative reports, exposing everything from illegal-toll-gate operators to bogus-medicine peddlers to teachers who accept students’ bribes. At a time when Beijing’s bosses are cracking down on political dissidents, media ““front runners’’ like ““Focus Report’’ are hitting just as hard at official graft and corruption–though only at the grass roots–and getting away with it. All is business as usual at the studios of ““Focus Report,’’ says producer Sun Jie, adding: ““We’ve experienced no interference at all.''
The TV muckrakers are not working alone. Newspapers like Guangdong’s local Southern Weekend have been tripping up rapacious local officials for years. Their enterprise rubbed off on the national press. China Youth Daily, a mainstream communist publication, even nailed a senior Henan police officer. While driving intoxicated, the paper reported, the officer hit two bicyclists, dragging one nearly 1,500 meters to his death before angry bystanders forced the cop to stop. After a judge sentenced the officer to death ““to pacify public anger,’’ the condemned man complained: ““I’ve been killed by journalists.’’ In response, the newspaper editorialized: ““We shouldn’t worry that the media can kill people [but rather that] media supervision might be too mild.''
Now ““Focus Report,’’ a program of the central government’s CCTV, has taken muckraking prime time. It boasts a viewing audience of 300 million–more than the population of the United States. What’s more, it’s required watching for key Chinese leaders. Prime Minister Zhu Rongji has even replayed videotapes of the program to his cabinet. Not long ago Zhu visited the studio, confessed to watching the show every evening and bantered: ““I’m also a target of your supervision, right?''
Well, let’s not get carried away. Hindered by limited resources and bureaucratic foot-dragging, Zhu has used ““media supervision,’’ as he calls it, to boost his anti-corruption crusade. He urged ““Focus Report’’ to be a ““mouthpiece of the people,’’ and competitors grumble that the show is a mouthpiece of the prime minister himself. Producer Sun denies the charge, insisting that his show ““focuses on our audience’s concerns.’’ In fact, it does both: most Chinese approve of Zhu’s cleanup campaign–and the hard-charging reformer is eager to enlist the media in his cause. In one of its biggest scoops, ““Focus Report’’ revealed in November that an Anhui distribution center had trucked in huge quantities of grain from other depots just before a prime ministerial visit; the idea was to ““trick’’ Zhu into thinking that the provincial grain reserves were bursting at the seams.
By Western ““gotcha’’ standards, the game in China is still ““gotcha, please.’’ Politically touchy subjects remain taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen protests and private foibles of top leaders. ““We don’t want to upset the public,’’ Sun says delicately. ““We focus on problems that can be solved, not those that are unsolvable.’’ Still, the 34-year-old producer has come a long way since the ’80s, when he was a Xinhua wire-service reporter dutifully pushing the Communist Party line. In 1992 Sun attended a program for Chinese journalists at Hawaii’s East-West Center. There he saw the light, and decided to switch to TV. He also saw a lot of American television news magazines such as ““60 Minutes’’ and ““20/20.’’ Sun’s correspondents still study tapes of the American programs for editorial inspiration and technical tips.
It shows. Hidden cameras and ambush interviews are part of ““Focus Report’s’’ crowd-pleasing formula. Though only a third of the show’s segments are critical, Sun says, ““if it’s not critical enough, that just means we haven’t done our job well.’’ Not long ago the show’s hidden cameras revealed how mudpacks and pedicures were being written off as ““medical expenses’’ in a beauty-parlor scam. In another program, reporters ambushed a provincial party secretary for an interview about illegal burials on precious farmland–and filmed him angrily throwing a cup at the camera. Similarly dramatic was footage of a Shanghai textile merchant pathetically trying to explain why he sold contaminated cotton. Agitated, he finally confessed on camera to accepting a bribe.
Can Zhu’s honeymoon with a more rambunctious press last? So far, Beijing’s crackdown has targeted pro-democracy and labor activists who have little or no impact on society at large. Some analysts warn that China’s media and publishing industry could be next. They point to last month’s People’s Daily report that 2,800 people had been detained in 1998 for selling ““illegal political publications’’–mostly pornography and pirated Chinese-language books exposing shenanigans by Politburo families–and the recent closure of a tiny Guangdong province paper called Cultural Times. If the mainstream media–especially a high-profile phenom like ““Focus Report’’–are compelled to pull their punches, hundreds of millions of Chinese will sense the chill.
But media insiders see several reasons that that shouldn’t happen. Neither Chinese leaders nor journalists themselves want to follow in the footsteps of the former Soviet Union, where the media unleashed by Mikhail Gorbachev turned on their former master–and Russia became a has-been. Instead, China’s media crusaders still function largely as an extension of the state. ““Our audience considers us as part of the government–except that we’re able to solve problems the government hasn’t solved,’’ explains Sun. ““So more and more citizens come to us with their grievances.’’ The bad news is that authorities still set media guidelines, including the proportion of positive versus critical stories. But the good news, says Sun, is that journalists can make a difference: ““Virtually 100 percent of the problems we focus on are resolved by the government.’’ As long as they can maintain that delicate balance, China’s feisty journalists will keep raking the muck.
