In my home country, China, the radio and television broadcasting industry and the media industry adhere to implementing socialism with Chinese characteristics, where the media must be state-run enterprises. The Chinese media is regarded as the propaganda department of the party and the government and operates as a market-oriented enterprise. I suppose the types of media can be roughly classified into three types from the perspective of content and mode of operation:
- The first category is the state and party news media, its existence is to serve political news and propaganda, focusing on the transmission of mainstream ideology, with People’s Daily as an example.http://en.people.cn
- The second one is the professional media with market-oriented operations, the existence space being compressed by the party news media and facing the crisis of official censorship and self-censorship, represented by ThePaper, CaiXin, and Sanlian Lifeweek Magazine. https://www.caixin.com
- Thirdly, self-media, which is an emerging information dissemination channel and pattern in the Internet age, means that the public also has the right to participate in the media industry. Still, the ethical norms have not yet been discussed, and it isn’t easy to reach the fact-checking of the professional media.
Growing up in mainland China, how should we understand the democratization of the media industry?
Owing to the special political system of our country, the portrayal of democracy in the propaganda of the institution is contradictory to the reality that the party media have monopolized the voice of the market. The reporting of the media cannot form the “free market of opinions” as the liberal theory of the press states, and it is difficult to have a practical discussion about the free-market environment.
Thus, I suppose we can consider the democratization of the media industry in several dimensions: whether it reports on controversial topics (including political, economic, social and cultural issues), whether it reflects on public attitudes, whether it is incorporated by the government’s ideology and serves as propaganda, and whether it leads to a virtuous circle of social introspection.
Regarding McChesney’s definition, I would like to introduce the representative media organization Sanlian Lifeweek Magazine.https://www.lifeweek.com.cn
The journalism and media activities of Sanlian Lifeweek Magazine have a nonprofit and noncommercial component and serve the public. Taking the COVID-19 incident as an example, Sanlian Lifeweek Magazine’s journalists first broke the information lockdown for the domestic press and then provided in-depth coverage of the epidemic on the spot in Wuhan. It provided a reliable information source for the public in a chaotic period, and it was one of the Chinese media magazines that recorded the scars of the epidemic for this era.
Furthermore, it is important to talk about The Initium. https://theinitium.com/zh-Hans The Initium is a Chinese-language media that is independent of mainland control, yet it can only report on the realities of the Chinese world from far away in Singapore. It focuses on political or social happenings in real time, blocked social movements or public deliberations, and marginalized populations blurred by the mainland media, with its coverage or commentaries radiating to the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the international arena.
Taking the Urumqi fire incident related to the COVID-19 epidemic lockdown as an example, which triggered the “White Paper” movement of civil organizations in China. The Initium integrated the people’s spontaneous media rituals, the process of the movement, interviews with movement participants, and the follow-up of the movement into an in-depth coverage of the topic that leaves a digital memory for the public.
https://theinitium.com/zh-Hans/channel/white-paper-protest-one-year
I always believe that the existence of media industry organizations is to establish public discourse resources and contribute to the development of a democratized society.
Chinese media people always strike the balance and goal of democratization in their way, and they are also mapping out the mobility of the media industry. By turning from traditional journalists into independent writers or establishing personal self-media platforms for their continuous voice, many media people are still trying to construct a democratization of China’s media world.