Copyright by John Charles Jirik 2008
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Copyright by John Charles Jirik 2008 The Dissertation Committee for John Charles Jirik certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Making news in the People’s Republic of China: The case of CCTV-9 Committee: John Downing, Co-Supervisor Karin Wilkins, Co-Supervisor Shanti Kumar Nikhil Sinha Joseph Straubhaar Making news in the People’s Republic of China: The case of CCTV-9 by John Charles Jirik, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2008 “We welcome these foreigners who come to help us. But the trouble with so many foreigners is that they soon want to dictate. They must remember that this is China, and that while their advice is eagerly received, we are the ones to decide if and how it will be used.” (Mao Zedong)1 Dedication For my family. 1 Brady (2003, p. 50). Acknowledgements I owe a huge debt of gratitude to John Downing and Karin Wilkins, co- supervisors of my dissertation, and to the other committee members – Shanti Kumar, Nikhil Sinha and Joseph Straubhaar. In addition, my family has been a constant source of support and encouragement over the years. In Austin, students, staff and faculty at The University of Texas contributed to this dissertation with support and discussion. On and off campus, a small circle made my stay in Austin pleasurable in myriad ways and with timely reminders of what is important and what is not. In Beijing, while I was doing field research, friends there brought the city to life in ways that escape mere description. Finally, I cannot thank enough my friends and colleagues at China Central Television. They made this dissertation possible, and they and their work are its subject. Although few of them are named, they know who they are and how they helped. I hope they can find themselves in my work and can see how they changed the way I think about news making in the People’s Republic of China. v Making news in the People’s Republic of China: The case of CCTV-9 Publication No._____________ John Charles Jirik, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2008 Co-Supervisor: John Downing Co-Supervisor: Karin Wilkins This dissertation explores the news making process at CCTV-9, the Beijing-based global English language service of China Central Television (CCTV). My interest in this topic was triggered by the strange manner in which so much debate about media reform in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) elides any real discussion of the contribution of journalists themselves to reform, which is almost invariably treated as something that happens to media from outside of, or regardless of, what journalists do. My aim in this research was to address this lapsus and foreground the work of journalists to show how it contributes to the changing institutional framework in which their work is embedded and therefore contributes to media reform. Drawing on ground-breaking work on bounded innovation and resistance by Pan Zhongdang and Lu Ye in this emerging field, I utilize concepts derived from their use of Michel de Certeau and discuss these concepts in light of the works of Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault to show how journalists at CCTV-9 exercised control over their work, despite their function as vi mouthpieces of the news and publicity system operated by the Communist Party of China and PRC government. I am not suggesting that PRC journalists are dissidents. However, my research did suggest that the mundane practice of journalism, even in so constrained a media environment as that of the PRC news system, can alter the manner in which news is made and thereby contribute to media reform. Utilizing participant observation of the CCTV-9 newsroom in 2004-2005, interviews with a range of news makers, in-house documents and a survey of content, I construct a picture of news making at CCTV-9 that foregrounds what to more macro-oriented analyses of media reform in the PRC has remained inaccessible, the minutiae of everyday life in the newsroom, and the tiny, but not inconsequential changes brought about by the ordinary work of journalists. vii Table of Contents List of Tables ........................................................................................................ xii List of Figures...................................................................................................... xiii List of Illustrations.................................................................................................xv Chapter 1: Introduction............................................................................................1 Outline of the problem....................................................................................1 Context of the problem ...................................................................................3 Scope of the problem ......................................................................................5 Contextualized and concretized research........................................................6 Instrumental power and journalistic agency ...................................................8 Rationale for doing this dissertation .............................................................12 Theorizing journalistic agency......................................................................18 Globalization & hybridization ......................................................................28 Outline of research questions........................................................................30 Outline of chapters........................................................................................31 Chapter 2: China, globalization & hybridization...................................................35 Introduction...................................................................................................35 Globalization theory......................................................................................36 The PRC’s problematization of globalization...............................................40 Hybridization in China’s globalization.........................................................47 Media, the nation & cultural policy ..............................................................49 Rethinking globalization from a Chinese perspective ..................................55 Discussion and summary ..............................................................................58 Chapter 3: The Development of television in the PRC..........................................62 Introduction...................................................................................................62 Politics in command......................................................................................63 Enter the market............................................................................................71 The launch of CCTV International ...............................................................82 viii Discussion and summary ..............................................................................89 Chapter 4: The journalist & journalism in the PRC...............................................92 Introduction...................................................................................................92 Media and power...........................................................................................94 Confucianism and the role of the journalist..................................................97 Speaking truth to power..............................................................................101 The social theory of modern journalism in the PRC...................................105 Discussion and summary ............................................................................114 Chapter 5: Theorizing journalism in the PRC......................................................117 Introduction.................................................................................................117 Hegemony and its relevance for PRC media studies..................................118 Institutional analysis and journalistic agency .............................................123 Discussion and summary ............................................................................135 Chapter 6: Methodology ......................................................................................139 Introduction.................................................................................................139 Constructivism and methodology ...............................................................144 Data collection methods..............................................................................146 Data collection, analysis, and write-up.......................................................158 Access .........................................................................................................191 IRB & the issue of human subjects.............................................................192 Problems with the research .........................................................................194 Discussion and summary ............................................................................196 Chapter 7: The relaunch.......................................................................................198 Introduction.................................................................................................198