Philip J Cunningham
The much-anticipated May 29, 2019 “debate” between an anchor
from Fox Business News and a counterpart from China’s CGTN, better known as CCTV, was
more of a letdown than a showdown, but it usefully illustrates some of the dynamics
at work in Sino-US sparring. The
debate was more about style than substance once Trish Regan recovered from
her opening gaffe that incorrectly characterized her counterpart Liu Xin as a
communist party member. Neither yielded to anger or got unduly flustered. They
each put on a good show of deferential broadcast manners, a good show of little
political significance.
Trish Regan and Liu Xin are both television professionals,
and while their on-air styles vary wildly, one coming off as soft and
seductive, the other prim and proper, they both instinctively know that looking
good is part of the job. Not just in terms of makeup, which nearly all TV
presenters, female and male alike, have to apply to compensate for unnaturally
bright artificial light of the studio, but in terms of composure and good
humor, winking to their fan base, playing to the crowd.
They never engaged one another in a sustained way. It’s not
that Regan’s questions were off-topic, but there was no follow up. She could
ask what she wanted, with a smile, and Liu could answer as she wanted, with a
smile. A familiar game to media observers; tough questions followed by random
answers.
I should know. I’ve been in the CCTV hot seat, in the same Beijing
office where Liu Xin first started work. As a frequent guest and freelance “global
affairs commentator” on CCTV’s long-running “Dialogue,” I enjoyed sparring with
host Yang Rui, who modeled his show after BBC’s “Hard Talk,” and liked to think
of himself as a tough interviewer. A consummate professional, he did his
research and was well-prepared for every show.
But as a party member--an affiliation Yang Rui was so proud of he
made a point of telling me about an emotional visit to the grave of Karl Marx
in London—he was hemmed in. He could dish it out, but he had to stay inside the
box. I quickly learned not to be offended by his sometimes strident and
accusative style, partly because it was a kind of role play--in sharp contrast
with his warm and congenial demeanor before and after the show--but also
because it was a cue for me go outside the box and talk about things in terms
that were not available to him. He could set the tone with party-line
questions, and I could answer with the implicit subversion of an individual
answerable to no one.
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Author talking with Yang Rui in CCTV studio |
Resident in Beijing when the administration of Bush Jr. was
about to launch its war on Iraq, I was grateful that CCTV was willing to air my
views about the “wrong war for the wrong reason at the wrong time” at a time when much of the US media was banging the war drums. If
anything, I was more critical of US policy than the Chinese pundits, if only
because I cared more. The follies of US foreign wars were but egregious own-goals
in a spectator sport for a nation at peace.
Sometimes I found myself standing to the left of Yang Rui on China issues as well. When he gave me a pre-scripted list of “outstanding Chinese” from which to name the “Man of the Year” (Bo Xilai and Yao Ming were the top contenders) I demurred. “How about the coal-miners?” I countered. The workers suffer such hardship, their sacrifice helps put on the lights in this studio. The host went silent. It’s hard for a man who wept at the grave of Karl Marx to argue with communism.
Sometimes I found myself standing to the left of Yang Rui on China issues as well. When he gave me a pre-scripted list of “outstanding Chinese” from which to name the “Man of the Year” (Bo Xilai and Yao Ming were the top contenders) I demurred. “How about the coal-miners?” I countered. The workers suffer such hardship, their sacrifice helps put on the lights in this studio. The host went silent. It’s hard for a man who wept at the grave of Karl Marx to argue with communism.
Although Yang Rui was familiar with my passionate involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations through talk, texts and film, I was only able to reference the event on air once during the 2008 Olympics. I had already suggested that the Dalai Lama should be invited to talk on Dialogue which provoked a wry smile and sent a few eyebrows flying, but when I breached the topic of Tiananmen, things went cold. I got only as far as saying something about the beauty red flags waving under the red sky, the inspiring, peaceful sight of seeing so many people in the street. Admittedly my comment was off-topic, so it was no surprise that the conversation was quickly roped in and redirected back to "soft power"or whatever the frame of the day was.
It’s hard to argue against a party line, so I
could relate to Trish Regan's need to devise a narrative strategy to dislodge the orthodoxy of a state
broadcaster. I picked up on this dynamic right away when she tried to box Liu Xin in as a
party member. A strategic misstep, because in Liu Xin’s case it was technically
untrue. Not that it takes a card-carrying affiliation to toe a line, of course, which Trish Regan should know as a loyal member of the Fox team. Neither she nor Liu Xin showed a willingness to deviate far from their respective editorial lines. Or to put it more cynically, you don't bite the hand that feeds.
The former beauty queen from New Hampshire fluttered her false
eyelashes and pursed her cosmetically-glossed lips with aplomb, but she
showed a weak command of the issues. She’s not savvy about economics or world
politics and when she wings it, she runs
the risk of sounding like Trump on a bad hair day; her recent excoriation of
“socialist” Denmark, pairing it with US-regime-change-flavor-of-the-month Venezuela,
being a case
in point.
Though anchors at TV stations like Fox work in an
environment that offers constitutionally-protected free expression, this huge
leg-up on the ritualistic, Leninist-style broadcasting favored in China is
eroded by US partisan politics, insidious commercialism and low-brow populism. American
network and cable news alike feel the need to entertain and manipulate around
the clock, pandering to ever-narrowing niche audiences. How far US news
standards have fallen since the days of no-nonsense coverage that addressed the
nation as a whole, when journalistic legends such as Edward Murrow and Walter
Cronkite saw the truthful, autonomous and sober delivery of news as a civic
responsibility. The news was never meant to be a cash cow for commercial sponsors.
As someone who has worked in television news for networks on
both sides of the Pacific, I would not hesitate to say that American TV has
generally gotten worse and Chinese TV has generally gotten better. It does not
surprise me that Regan and Liu were able to meet as co-equals in this battle of
the brands. Indeed, in this feeble contest at least, the Chinese side had a
slight edge, because it’s hard to answer questions without talking policy, and
Liu offered more gristle for thought than the airy and condescending Regan.
Fox News is not state TV, but it panders to jingoistic
instincts and has been a relentlessly partisan supporter of Trump. The US
President, in turn, is the TV station’s biggest fan, and looks to Fox rather
than his intelligence briefs for his understanding of the world. This mutual
admiration feedback loop has a craven, authoritarian flavor.
CCTV is state TV, but that is not the crux of the problem;
after all BBC, and even Japan’s NHK, have done good journalism under nominal
state control. But China’s news ecosystem seems to be changing for the worse. I was a regular guest on CCTV during the free-wheeling
Hu Jintao years, a relatively open time for Chinese media, and have since spoken out
against the tightening of controls. It is regrettable to see a network that was
moving in a cosmopolitan direction and keen on reform to suffer the editorial setbacks
it has, and plain shocking to see it used for the airing of forced confessions.
If the Regan-Liu “debate” didn’t live up to the hype
redolent of a prize fight, at least it was a step towards talking. Xenophobia is
sweeping broadcast entities on both sides of the Pacific, but the dialogue must
continue. It’s not good for CCTV to muffle itself as mouth of the party, nor is
it good for US TV ownership to be in the choke-hold of a few billionaires. In
both cases, a few men shape the news for the many. One need only consider the
political clout of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch to see how pervasive the influence
of a non-elected magnate can be.
In the meantime, the Twitter quarrel of two news anchors has
provoked broadcasters on both sides to up the exchange, both in terms of
decorum and audience, and that’s a good thing for Sino-US relations.