Would You Join Me for Tea?
If you understand HOW news gets into the newspapers in any given location you'll understand what that news REALLY means. For example, in my home town of West Peavine, the newspaper simply steals stories from other newspapers in Greater Peavine and reprints them without investigating whether or not the stories are true. In this way, a lot of bad information gets passed around from newspaper to newspaper until the unsuspecting public begins to believe the story's spin - "how could something so widely reported be wrong?"
The largest newspaper in Peavine is so bad, so fundamentally bad, that the Columbia Journalism Review once called it America's Worst Newspaper - explaining that it operated like a newspaper in reverse. "It actually sucks the intelligence out of the reader."
Chinese newspapers do the same thing of course - there are many lazy journalists here too. But what sets the newspapers here apart is the government control and influence that determines what people read - or don't read. You can actually learn a lot by noticing what is NOT in the papers. A lot of bad news doesn't get into the papers here - and if it does finally hit the headlines, there's a reason.
Take this story that appeared in the Shanghai Daily for instance. It's about the police closing down a tea house that ripped foreign tourists off. To expats in Shanghai this article will elicit a chuckle. Everyone living in Shanghai knows that this scam is out in the open on Nanjing Road's pedestrian street. Certainly, the police know about it. As a foreigner you can't walk down Nanjing Road without numerous young women approaching you and asking you to have tea with them. What happens next, the presentation of the outrageous bill, the touts that scare the foreigners into paying, the unconcerned police that take the report, has been all over the Internet for years. If the Shanghai Daily didn't know about it they've had their heads in the sand for years. So why is this particular incident, out the hundreds that have happened before, both reported and cracked down on? Because in this case, the angry Frenchmen who paid about US$1,000 for tea, went to a local paper and some energetic, possibly brave, reporter or editor wrote about it. Once it's in any paper, no matter how small, then the police and the larger media must make a show of doing something.
Let me predict that within a week the same scam teahouse operator will be back in business in a different location under a different name - doing the same thing. And no official will lift a finger and the Daily Disappointment won't write about it. So, for the long term, you travellers out there, don't accept invitations to tea from pretty young ladies on Nanjing Street.
If you understand HOW news gets into the newspapers in any given location you'll understand what that news REALLY means. For example, in my home town of West Peavine, the newspaper simply steals stories from other newspapers in Greater Peavine and reprints them without investigating whether or not the stories are true. In this way, a lot of bad information gets passed around from newspaper to newspaper until the unsuspecting public begins to believe the story's spin - "how could something so widely reported be wrong?"
The largest newspaper in Peavine is so bad, so fundamentally bad, that the Columbia Journalism Review once called it America's Worst Newspaper - explaining that it operated like a newspaper in reverse. "It actually sucks the intelligence out of the reader."
Chinese newspapers do the same thing of course - there are many lazy journalists here too. But what sets the newspapers here apart is the government control and influence that determines what people read - or don't read. You can actually learn a lot by noticing what is NOT in the papers. A lot of bad news doesn't get into the papers here - and if it does finally hit the headlines, there's a reason.
Take this story that appeared in the Shanghai Daily for instance. It's about the police closing down a tea house that ripped foreign tourists off. To expats in Shanghai this article will elicit a chuckle. Everyone living in Shanghai knows that this scam is out in the open on Nanjing Road's pedestrian street. Certainly, the police know about it. As a foreigner you can't walk down Nanjing Road without numerous young women approaching you and asking you to have tea with them. What happens next, the presentation of the outrageous bill, the touts that scare the foreigners into paying, the unconcerned police that take the report, has been all over the Internet for years. If the Shanghai Daily didn't know about it they've had their heads in the sand for years. So why is this particular incident, out the hundreds that have happened before, both reported and cracked down on? Because in this case, the angry Frenchmen who paid about US$1,000 for tea, went to a local paper and some energetic, possibly brave, reporter or editor wrote about it. Once it's in any paper, no matter how small, then the police and the larger media must make a show of doing something.
Let me predict that within a week the same scam teahouse operator will be back in business in a different location under a different name - doing the same thing. And no official will lift a finger and the Daily Disappointment won't write about it. So, for the long term, you travellers out there, don't accept invitations to tea from pretty young ladies on Nanjing Street.
posted by Kevcham at 8:29 AM
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