ESSAY: CCTV's coverage of disasters in China and Japan couldn't be more different
The best way to buttress an editorial line in which China is the best is to emphasize bad news and disaster elsewhere, especially in countries not in line with Beijing's line.
January 16 update:
The deadly earthquake that struck Japan on New Year’s Day did not go unnoticed in China. It was covered from day one and it’s been covered everyday since. In fact, the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, initially called the Ishikawa quake on Chinese TV, has been a top foreign news story on CCTV’s flagship news program Xinwen Lianbo for two weeks and counting.
The January 16 evening news update on the Noto quake continues in the well-trod path of CCTV’s faintly duplicitous daily coverage of the January 1 tremblor. In keeping with a jaundiced editorial policy that accentuates the negative in Japan news, the lavish daily spreads continue to stress the damage with scant evidence of any rescue efforts. Assistance from Tokyo is nowhere to be seen, and the isolated and forlorn quake hit region seems to be buried with neglect, forgotten by the government and lost in time.
Weeks can drift by without CCTV turning its gaze to Japan, so this coverage really stands out. Firstly, the quake IS an important story. As with most quakes, there are still people missing and known casualties are over 150. Likewise, the Haneda Airport crash was a big story, with major coverage on January 2, more fiery shots on January 3, and some follow up coverage of the charred wrecked fuselage being dismantled on January 5 and 6.
To put the sudden uptick in Japan coverage in context, both of CCTV’s Japan disaster stories are of journalistic merit; earthquakes and plane crashes are human interest stories of universal significance.
On the other hand, Xinwen Lianbo has about ten minutes to cover news from the entire planet in its foreign news slot, so some sense of proportion is called for, especially with Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine and other pressing stories to cover. Outsized coverage is understandable on the first day or two, but two full weeks after the event, CCTV has little or nothing to add to the original story, yet it is still being flogged heavily.
Perhaps it’s best understood as a practice assignment for CCTV crews who don’t get much practice covering breaking news at home. Half a dozen different reporters have done stand-ups from Ishikawa, and camera crews continue to roam, alert to the smallest detail of cracked pavement or collapsed residence.
To be fair, CCTV’s coverage, especially of the earthquake, has been relatively free of outright editorializing, even when it has been less than even-handed.
But the sound-bites culled from the handful of man-in-the-street interviews that make it on air sound cherry-picked to emphasize Japanese government neglect and Japanese civilian suffering.
That said, the Beijing news editors have not taken some of the cheap shots recently associated with state TV coverage of Japan, such as CCTV’s hysterical scare stories about Fukushima polluting the world’s oceans, historic tensions with South Korea, and the rather predictable pouncing on of negative new reports of corruption, economic slumps, accidents, pollution, etc.
The coverage, while low-key, is not letting Japan off easy.
CCTV’s dispatch of crews to the quake zone serves to create a documentary record with propagandistic value. For example, consider the January 5 new report in which CCTV reporter Jin Dong interviewed a local resident. Unlike comparable reports from disaster scenes in China where CCTV crews put the stress on rescue efforts and have an ear out for praise of the party and thanks to Xi Jinping’s wise guidance, CCTV’s on-the-street interview with a young man named Okamoto in Ishikawa is honest and straight-forward:
“We have no power, no phone signals, we are lacking supplies, most of all water. It’s hard to find food to feed the children.”
I don’t doubt the veracity or sincerity of the interview, but it does suggest a sluggish government response; it is precisely the kind of complaint that would never get aired in China.
Considered in the long view of CCTV’s regular, almost ritualistic castigation of Japan under the tacit “stick it to Tokyo” editorial policy, disasters are ready-made bad news that require only light editing. They are low-hanging tabloid fruit that can be brushed off and consumed without significant preparation.
In contrast, CCTV’s long-standing practice of showing China disasters in the best possible light, even when the facts don’t back it up, requires the work and heavy-handed censorship.
The devastating floods that hit north China in August 2023 killing hundreds and inundating entire towns got scant negative coverage on CCTV. The shocking scenes seen around the world, mostly lifted from social media, of swollen rivers, broken bridges, with cars and people being swept away never made it on air. Instead, there were vague reports, bureaucratic pronunciamentos and a clay-footed delay, not dissimilar to Beijing’s slow response to the Covid outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020, as bureaucrats debated how to handle the discomfiting news.
In both cases, the Chinese Communist Party brushed up reality and emerged as the hero of the piece, showing rescue workers in color-coordinated uniforms and party officials pointing out directions. The late premier Li Keqiang visited Wuhan in 2020 in the stead of the cautious Xi during Covid, but Xi did not make an appearance in the 2023 flood zone, despite the fact that parts of Beijing itself were hard hit, until two months after the waters receded.
On the question of earthquakes, CCTV evening news lavished more screen time on last year’s earthquake in Iran than a more recent earthquake in China itself. The Iran narrative was catnip for CCTV editors under pressure to present China as a safe haven in a world of woes.
In contrast to the celebratory, self-congratulatory coverage of the earthquake in Iran, the December 18, 2023 Jishishan quake that struck Gansu Province and part of Qinghai was carefully censored. CCTV coverage did not dwell on depressing scenes of destruction but rather focused on CCP authorized rescue efforts. The reports were about as upbeat and patriotic as can be despite a death toll of over 150 and a thousand injured.
The images of runway collision at Haneda Airport on January 2 was good fodder for TV news in a cynical sense; fiery and dramatic, it was a sober reminder of inherent dangers in a world where jet travel is routine. There were 5 casualties in the smaller Coast Guard craft, but amazingly enough, all 367 passengers and 12 crew members were safely evacuated from the A350, a testament to Japanese safety protocol that got lost in China’s schadenfreude-laden coverage that focused on the flames.
On March 21, 2022, a Chinese Eastern flight from Kunming to Guangzhou mysteriously fell from the sky killing everyone onboard. The only serious mention it got in the news was that the CCP was looking into it, a local communist official visited the crash site and Xi Jinping augustly demanded “absolute” aviation safety. There has been no significant follow up; it’s as if the plane fell out of the sky and the narrative itself got buried in the crash.
When Hawaii’s Maui island went up in smoke last August, hit by wildfires, CCTV was on scene. Drawing on purchased footage in addition to its own, it told a story of abject neglect, suggesting the US government doesn’t care for its people the way the Chinese government cares for its people. This story was so popular with the censors it aired daily for several weeks on end.
Yet if a China domestic news story cannot be spun in a positive direction, it is unlikely to merit any state TV coverage at all. The normal rules of journalism simply do not apply.
When it comes to foreign coverage, CCTV and other state media sometimes commit something akin to journalism, if only opportunistically, because the best way to buttress a worldview in which China is the best is to emphasize stories about bad things happening elsewhere in the world.
January 10 update:
The Japan quake is still Xinwen Lianbo’s top foreign news story ten days into the New Year, even with a crowded slate of other pressing foreign news stories to attend to.
The January 16 news continues CCTV’s duplicitous daily coverage of the January 1 Noto quake. In keeping with China’s jaundiced editorial policy towards Japan, the images stress only damage and offer not even a hint of rescue. Assistance from Tokyo is nowhere to be seen, and the isolated and forlorn quake hit region seems to be buried with neglect, forgotten by the government and lost in time.
