Monday, August 31, 2009

More flakiness in Chinese journalism

I was watching the news on CCTV9 - the "international" channel of the state television company here - over the weekend, depressed to hear more threatening rhetoric in response to a proposed visit to Taiwan by the Dalai Lama.
 
The report quoted someone - a Taiwanese quisling from the Kuomintang political party, I believe - decrying the visit as "politically motivated" and "likely to destroy cross-Strait relations".  The item then concluded by saying (I kid you not), "And Al-Jazeera reported similar comments."
 
Now, Chinese journalists are notoriously bad - even worse than Chinese academics! - at distinguishing secondary from primary sources; but even so, this was quite a staggering lapse.  Indeed, even the intention behind the phrase is somewhat baffling.  Is this supposed to be implying that the celebrated Arab news agency is adopting an editorial stance that joins in condemnation of the DL's possible visit?  They didn't seem to be saying quite that.  Or is the fact that Al-Jazeera is reporting such condemnations seen to grant them an imprimatur of greater credibility and significance?  (And is it only laowai cynics such as myself who wonder if, by contrast, other news sources of even greater fame and influence - such as, oh, I don't know, the BBC perhaps - considered this story undeserving of comment?)
 
My parsing of this comment was this: "And this isn't just one self-serving, rent-a-quote politician saying this.  Oh no.  Lots of people are saying it.  But we're too lazy to tell you who."
 
 
I assume that the native English speakers on the editorial staff at CCTV9 don't work at weekends.  Either that, or they're not trusted to work on stories about any of "the three T's".  Or perhaps they're just so beaten down by the relentlessly dismal quality of the material they have to work with that they've given up trying.
 
 

2 comments:

JES said...

So good to see you exercising your blogging muscles again. Are you still posting via email?

Presumably, the Al-Jazeera remark was not followed up with additional details. A shame, 'cause besides the questions it raised in your head I also wondered just how similar those "similar" comments might have been. I can almost imagine a scenario in which A-J was simply quoting the same anonymous source. ("Almost" because they wouldn't be that weaselly, would they?)

[Off-topic: a recent Language Log post about "Sino-American Name Reversion" might be of interest to you.]

Froog said...

Yes, e-mail only at present. I need to subscribe to a VPN service, but, not having a credit card any more, I need to impose on a friend in order to do that. And that in turn probably means that I need to take my computer out to a bar. And that in turn means that I have to be very careful about when and where...

I hadn't come across that phenomenon of Chinese going back to their original names when overseas. I suspect it may be fairly recent, and perhaps confined to America.