Xinhua 'polishes' my story

The stories I write sometimes catch the attention of editors at Xinhua, the state-run news service. If the stories are positive, Xinhua sometimes snatches them and distributes them.  Far as I know they don’t pay a dime. What they do is, er, polish them. That is, they take out anything negative.

This doesn’t just happen to me. It happens to all resident foreign correspondents in China.

This serves several purposes for Xinhua and its readers. For masses of readers, it makes them think that foreign journalists are completely admiring of modern China and have nothing negative to say. A slightly more discerning reader may think foreigner reporters are saps. They know that China has warts, and may wonder why the foreign journalists don’t see them.

Only very savvy readers know that Xinhua guts the negative from stories.

It recently happened to me again. This time, Xinhua or China Daily didn’t actually carry the story, applying the scissors to negative paragraphs. Rather, Xinhua wrote a story about the story. Here’s what the agency said:

U.S. media: Beijing Olympics a "clear success" 

www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-15 23:57:32

    WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- A week into the Beijing Olympic Games, athletes brim with praise for the Olympics venues, and the Games are seen as a "clear success," the McClatchy newspapers reported Friday.

   Athletes and several International Olympic Committee (IOC) members thought "China has reason for pride at how the 29th Olympic Games are unfolding." They laud the world-class facilities, precision organization and the hospitality of armies of Chinese volunteers, according to the newspapers.

   "The organization and everything else ... is just unreal. The accommodation, the food is lovely ... It's absolutely super," Kenny Egan, Ireland's light heavyweight boxer who qualified yesterday for the Olympic quarter-finals with a 10-2 dismissal of Turkey's Bahram Muzaffer, was quoted as saying.

    "The organization was perfect," Austria's women's volleyballer Doris Schwaiger was reported as saying, "I haven't found anything that is not okay."

    The newspapers also praised Chinese government's anti-pollution measures that have cleared Beijing's streets of much of its traffic and lessened the smog.

    "Friday was the clearest day of the games with a cloudless sky and vistas of the western hills on Beijing's outskirts," depicted the reports.

    Arne Ljungqvist, the IOC chief medical official, also said Friday in Beijing that "the recent several days have had very good conditions indeed."

Now here’s the actual story I wrote:

China sees Games as success, thanks to rain and fakery

By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING — A week into the Summer Games, athletes brim with praise for the Olympics venues, rain has mercifully cleared the skies of smog and China beams at its success even as it deflects charges of "phony spectators" and other fakery at the games.

Athletes at marquee Olympic events like swimming, basketball and track and field have played to arenas full of enthusiastic fans, but rows of forlorn empty seats look down at a surprising number of venues, including tennis and field hockey.

"The games have been proceeding pretty smoothly," said Wang Wei, vice president and spokesperson for the Beijing Olympic organizers.

China has reason for pride at how the 29th Olympic Games are unfolding, according to athletes and several International Olympic Committee members. They laud the world-class facilities, precision organization and the hospitality of armies of Chinese volunteers.

"The organization and everything else . . . is just unreal. The accommodation, the food is lovely," said Kenny Egan, an Irish light heavyweight bathed in sweat after a bout in the boxing arena. "It's absolutely super."

At the new beach volleyball stadium, loud speakers pump out "Put Your Hands Up in the Air!" and an animator urges spectators to do the Mexican Wave as resting Austrian women's volleyballer Doris Schwaiger gushes about the games.

"The organization is perfect," the 23-year-old spiker said. "I haven't found anything that is not okay."

Occasionally heavy rains, slight winds and government-mandated anti-pollution measures that have cleared Beijing's streets of much of its traffic have lessened the smog that normally cloaks the capital. Friday was the clearest day of the games with a cloudless skies and vistas of the western hills on Beijing's outskirts.

A key test of Beijing's air quality will come this weekend with several endurance events. On Sunday, tens of thousands of Chinese and foreign spectators will fill city streets for the women's marathon. Also occurring this weekend are the two-day women's heptathlon and the men's 10,000 meter final.

Heat and humidity have sapped the strength of some athletes, but air quality has stayed well within the range of what the International Olympic Committee considers safe air.

"The recent several days have had very good conditions indeed," said Arne Ljungqvist, the IOC's chief medical officer.

Faced with partially empty arenas, authorities have mobilized armies of volunteers to attend Olympic events, despite the fact that all seven million tickets to the Summer Games were sold out or distributed to national Olympic committees.

Some of the Chinese spectators appear lost at the intricacies of the events they watch as they sit in blocks in stands, wearing colored T-shirts and waving flags.

IOC member Kai Holm, a Dane, called them "phony spectators."

"They sit around in small groups, some in yellow shirts, some in red shirts," Holm said. "They do not understand the rules of the game they cheer. It's a little bit funny."

Holm said leaders tell volunteers when to cheer: "They are applauding by signs."

Police look the other way at rampant ticket selling and scalping unfolding near some of the Olympic venues, such as the Workers' Stadium that is hosting soccer matches and the nearby Workers' Gymnasium that hosts boxing.

"If we were dealers, we could make an extreme profit," said Tamas Balazs, a Hungarian who was trying to get rid of field hockey and boxing tickets that he said a travel agency back in Budapest required that he buy as part of a package.

Holm said scalpers were pulling in $2,000 to $3,000 per ticket for major events at the aquatics center, where U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps was on a gold medal binge.

Charges of fakery have dogged China since the opening ceremonies of the games. Earlier in the week, China acknowledged that the real singer of the song "Ode to the Motherland" at the ceremony was a girl with bad teeth and not pretty enough, so they put on an angelic 9-year-old to lip-synch the song.

China also said some of the "live" fireworks shown on television coverage of the opening games were actually computer-generated images.

On Friday, China acknowledged that children clad in ethnic costume who carried the Chinese flag at the ceremony were not actually from any of China's 56 minority ethnic groups.

Wang, the games spokesman, dismissed criticism of the fakery, saying the children were "actors and actresses and performers."

"It is typical for Chinese performers to wear different apparel from different ethnic groups. There is nothing special about it," Wang said at a news briefing. "They will wear different apparel to signify people are friendly and happy together."

China's majority Han Chinese, who make up about 92 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people, have poor relations with some of the minority groups, particularly Tibetans and Uighurs, a restive Muslim minority in China's far west, which has been roiled by separatist violence.

A bright aspect of the games has been the surprising lack of positive doping tests. Medals were taken away Friday from a Vietnamese gymnast and a North Korean medalist in shooting who failed doping tests. They are only the second and third athletes to fail doping tests during the games.

The low number "is a feature of increased awareness in the sports population that doping is unacceptable," Ljungqvist said.

A coach of a losing Polish swimmer cast aspersions earlier this week on the achievement of a Chinese swimmer in the women's 200-meter butterfly, suggesting her smashing of a world record by a whopping 1.22 seconds was "not rational."

Pan Jiazhang, the coach of Chinese swimmer Liu Zige, strongly defended Liu and China's swimming program, which was dogged by doping allegations in the 1990s.

"Look at how many times our swimmers have been tested, I assure you that this is a clean team," Pan was quoted in the state-run China Daily as saying.

Among the few people who are grumpy at the games are some foreign journalists, who have sparred daily with IOC and Beijing organizing committee spokesmen about incidents of police violence against journalists and over whether China has broken commitments it made on media freedom and human rights to win the right in 2001 to host this year's games.

Comments

[A B]

Oh come on Tim....didn't you know that Xinhua is short for "Bu Xin" or "Bu Xiang"!

There is the minor little problem that when they do that, they undermine the credibility of the brand, and drive more readers to read the original to see what was really said....

[PaZhuLian]

Well in that case, TJ or McClatchy oughta pay Xinhua for all that free marketing and increased readership. By “polishing” stories like this, Xinhua effectively surrenders its remaining handful of English reader to the “dark side”. What’s there to gripe about?

[A B]

Um.... McClatchy do not live on "free marketing and increased readership".

How about Xinhua paying reasonable fees for the use of their content?

Imagine the affront to Xinhua if their stuff got ran in McClatchy papers without royalties and permissions?

[Search4T]

If it's the unpaid fee for quotation that's bothering TJ, he or McClatchy should take it up to Xinhua or maybe get some "class action" going and sue the pants off that commie mouthpiece, instead of biatching about it (and quoting) here on this blog, which kind of undermines their case.

I would say his gripe is about the "polishing" part.
As in: I got my ass chewed off by my editor-in-chief the other day for no reason, only to find out later that some SOB Xinhua editor “polished” my story.

[A B]

If the usage within the "fair use" provision of the copyright law, then there is not much that can be done for unauthorized usage.

However, if substantial amounts of the article is reproduced, then it goes beyond "fair use" and it is actionable.

The distortions and selective use is another issue altogether.

[Sparkle]

Xinhua and CCTV? That's FOX news or CNN of China. No one reads anything from them... They just manufacture c*** like FOX news and CNN... I shall swear with all possible curses that anyone can imagine on them.

[Olivier Wagner]

I saw a similar article yesterday: http://www.chinamediablog.com/2008/08/29/really-were-just-editing-for-word-count/

Obviously, they're only editing for word count. Also, the link to www.beijingdaily.com.cn , whih showed the full comparaison between the New York Times article and the edited version is no longer accessible. Obviously, this is just a technical error that has nothing to do with the content of the said HTML page.

[Pffefer]

Tim,

"A slightly more discerning reader may think foreigner reporters are saps. They know that China has warts, and may wonder why the foreign journalists don’t see them.
Only very savvy readers know that Xinhua guts the negative from stories."

Only very savvy readers?? Come on, Tim. Do you think most readers are retarded? I'd argue it would truly surprise most readers if foreign media stop churning out any negative stuff about China on a daily basis.

[PaZhuLian]

@Pffefer

By "savvy" I think TJ was referring to people like you, who not only possesses superb comprehension of western languages and cultures, but also have unfettered access to western media negativity in its full unadulterated glory.

Unfortunately, many people have to make the difficult choice between Xinhua affiliates and the likes of Epoch Times given their equally exemplary journalistic standard, even if they have access to both groups.

[peter]

If one desires to obtain or secure an Academic placement in China, one can use this insideous practice to one's advantage.

Write a story less than 100 words long, in simple English, praising China. Utilize current jargon, if you can.

When your story gets picked-up and polished (and it will), hard-copy it and attach it to your resume.