What is on the China agenda? - the WTO column

(tomorrow at Chinabiz)

Shanghai – A few days ago I sat down with a colleague from Hong Kong at a meeting of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club who became rather emotional about the latest developments in his city. I had been following that news from Hong Kong, just like I would follow the news about Taiwan, the US presidential elections and the Beijing ban on dyed hair for Chinese TV-anchors. Good to notice, but it did not really seem to touch me.

Unlike many of my non-journalistic friends here in Shanghai I’m following those far away events because one of these days they might become part of a larger agenda, like the war in Iraq became. I’m part of some informal discussion groups with colleagues on how the future of foreign correspondence will look like, so I have to know what is going on in other parts of the world.
So I see their comments on the elections in India, the relieve operations in North Korea but feel not really involved and see that my interests are changing. That is partly because our job has changed. In the past, we journalists, did set the agenda. I still remember a joyful meeting with colleagues in the Jinjiang Hotel after a press conference and with a good glass of wine. We actually discussed whether we would take another glass, let the deadline be the deadline and file the story a day later. We did not, but we could have.
In those days the South China Morning Post would set the China agenda for the foreign media. At the editorial desks in Hong Kong they made a selection of the news – also from the newswires – that would be followed worldwide.
Those days are over, fortunately, because of the internet. Now you, our readers, can go online and check whether we do a good job and whether we do it fast enough. I’m still experimenting with new ways of reporting but thanks to the internet I can file reports before a meeting has actually finished to my weblog. The colleagues of the traditional newswires look rather worried when I unpack my laptop onsite and check whether a location has a wireless connection or not. I cannot be a thorough as they can be, when they go back to the office, check their background material, drink a cup of coffee and send their article to their editors, but for sure I’m much faster.

What our audiences have discovered is that the traditional media they used to rely on made more mistakes in their coverage then they expected. The recent scandals about reporters making up their stories or bending story lines for political reasons, has seriously undermined the credibility of the traditional media.
I feel it is good that thanks to the internet we can have a more complete story, but what I’m increasingly missing is the selection, the agenda-setting mechanisms that have also eroded. Of course it is better that Chinese media now report on all the mining accidents in their country instead of covering them up like they used to, but two, three major accidents per week is killing for the subject itself.
Setting the agenda might be in China tougher than in most other place, since all politics – and thus the news – is local politics. You tend to focus more on what is happening around you, while developments in other big cities, even Beijing, seem far away.

The discussing is and will be - an ongoing one: please feel free to react.

Fons Tuinstra