Just heard a story of an incident that happened two weeks ago while I was in Europe, but is rather telling for the current media relations in China. Dragon TV of the Shanghai Media Groups has been competing successfully with the national news of CCTV at seven o'clock. Traditionally all Chinese watch the news at seven.The news of Dragon TV was broadcasted from 6:30 to 7:30 and was doing very well, because it was unlike the CCTV propaganda show more like a news program. Last year it won a prize as the best news program in China. But two weeks ago Shanghai's new party chief forced the Shanghai Media Group to toe the old line. Since then Shanghainese can enjoy each day at seven the national news. The Dragon news program has been killed.
Of course, this step caused quite some bad feelings at the Shanghai Media Group and was widely discussed on the internet. But as always: politics does prevail.
None of the official media was allowed to publish about the incident and - even more remarkable - non of the foreign media actually noticed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment