Brave New World, Version 2.0

Widely reported in the western press this week were two seemingly unrelated but actually closely linked stories. The first, which has been building for a while, is the slow financial strangulation of the western (particularly American) print media. This should be a story that is "old hat" to most observers, with the Wall Street Journal now under Rupert Murdoch's awning, Hearst seriously thinking about closing the Seattle Post-Inteligencer, even the New York Times taking worried glances over the cliff. The Times has enough money to keep going until late Spring, apparently; after that, who knows? For once-upon-a-time newspaper types like me (I once worked for the News Dept. at the Denver Post and for a long-defunct Boulder, Colorado, weekly and even was a newspaper boy for Newsday), this is distressing stuff. Even more so for working journalists. But its potentially distressing for the politically democratic (not necessarily Democratic, mind you) world as well. Democracies thrive on truth and open, unfettered access to information. As a matter of fact, so do financial markets -- and they need all the help they can get, these days.

Now the second development: also widely reported (but a bit less so) is the story about China's media biggies' intention to expand to a global presence. The quick and inescapable thought that comes to mind is that CCTV, Xinhua & their cohorts have chosen a particularly auspicious time to hunt for global media properties. If the global economic collapse weren't enough, media properties are even more depressed than Citibank. Well, maybe not that bad, but almost. Advertising revenues are down, newspapers are being eclipsed by the much-less-lucrative internet, the big U.S. broadcasting networks are watching their once exclusive oligopoly get consumed by the omnivorous cable networks. On the one hand, a Chinese takeover isn't all bad. Working journalists can fantasize about something other than covering bread lines. On the other hand, one has to be a bit wary of how the game is likely to change. A few years ago I listened to Steven Dong, Managing Director of the Tsinghua-Reuters Programme on Global Journalism and a consultant to China's State Council Information Office, decry the free-for-all, chaotically open western media. He found the western press' public affairs coverage distressingly distasteful, particularly in its lack of deference towards the U.S.'s political leaders, and presumably China's too, for that matter. Truth is, China is not a place where Truth has a safe place. In China, the media's role is to mold minds in support of the government.

"Yes," you say, "but Chinese journalists are increasingly free to report what they find".

"Only," I'll respond, "within certain narrowly confined limits." Will this be the style of China's globalized media empire? I'd be willing to bet that we won't be hearing or reading or watching in-depth coverage of Chinese-born foibles. The express purpose of the global expansion is to put China under a positive light. As Liu Yunshan (CCP Politburo Member and Director of the Propaganda Department of the CCP's Central Committee) wrote,

“It has become an urgent strategic task for us to make our communication capability match our international status. In this modern era, who gains the advanced communication skills, the powerful communication capability and whose culture and value is more widely spread is able to more effectively influence the world.”

Its A Brave New World, as Aldous Huxley wrote so long ago (1932, actually, in the early years of the last big economic collapse). What form it will take is one of the intriguing puzzles of these early years of the 21st century.