Earthquake Coverage - New PR Territory
Coverage of Wen Jia Bao’s presence in China’s earthquake affected areas has been blanketing the media since Monday. This has been a significant PR boost within China. That Wen, a man at the top end of power, should take the effort to leave Beijing and visit the area - and perhaps ‘put himself in danger’ - seems genuinely moving to most Chinese I have questioned on the topic even when it is seen as clearly a good PR move.
Watching CCTV (waiting in line for a Visa application) I was bombarded with an endless stream of montages of paratroopers dropping into affected areas, literally armies of orange jumpsuit clad rescue teams boarding planes, soldiers route marching through mountain passes in the rain, nurses running through rubble saline bags held aloft and senior government officials comforting children and survivors in the rubble.
Historically disasters in China have received little or no media coverage. As Reuters are reporting, things have changed since the Tang Shan quake in 1976 and a flood on the Huai river a year earlier were kept as secret as possible. These changes, though are, and not entirely voluntary. It is not only that lessons have been learned over the years, but the ability to suppress news of disasters is also diminishing. The Telegraph in the UK is noting that Twitter and various blogs had disseminated news of the events, including video footage live as the situation was developing; far more quickly than moves could have been made to block them.
It is interesting though, that even in state run media outlets not all the coverage has been positive. Bloomberg in contrasting coverage of the earthquake and unrest in western China earlier this year notes that: “international media have been allowed free access to the quake region” but more interestingly that government officials where being asked questions, by journalists from the China Daily, about why schools had collapsed when in many instances government buildings had not.
I can think of many reasons a Beijing based reporter would feel free to ask questions that might make regional officials uncomfortable, reasons that would in no way be at odds with central government goals. One does have the feeling, however, that the new ‘more open’ approach to controlling coverage of this incident is, along with the Olympics, taking the Chinese central government out of its comfort zone.
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