A、The Times B、The Financial Times C、The Thames D、The Independent B

Z: Welcome to our today’s program. Today we will talk about Western media’s presentation of the third world. In fact, it has always been quite problematic. Today we have a British media sociologist join us to talk about how the British media treat China and the Third World. Mr. Mungham, you’ve been teaching journalist studies for many years and some of your students are from the Third World, so did you ever question about the way the British media present their home countries or the Third World in general? M: Yes. We do get the questions all the time about that. The British press tends to have a very limited agenda when they come to cover China. They tend to, if driven largely by human interest stories, cover the bizarre kind, or they concentrate on the other classic disasters or crises. One exception is perhaps the Financial Times, the paper, I think, that gives China serious consideration. That paper is read by investors, by the big banks, the finance houses. They really want to show what’s going on in China because that will influence their investment decisions. So if I want to raise some serious stuff about China, I always look at the Financial Times first, as my starting point. I don’t think even the Guardian, which is a good paper, offers the kind of what we call intelligent, systematic coverage of China and China’s concerns.
Z: Then why do you think this is the case?
M: It’s not the fault that just lies with the press people in the western world. I mean some of it does. I think probably the key reason for this, this troubled coverage, is that most foreign coverage is expensive to do. And they, the British press, particularly the British popular press, have cut back drastically on foreign coverage. They do cover the developing world, of course, if the royal members visit those countries. So you have that problem on our side but there are also problems on the other side. Some developing countries are not always friendly to receive western journalists. There are problems sometimes in reporting from the developing world. Some of those problems are political. There are problems of censorship and the restrictions on the travel and technical difficulties.
Z: Do you think it is crucial for the independent market-driven media to coexist with the government official media? Do you think this will do good to political democracy in the Third-World countries?
M: Well, I think the relationship between them is that if you have a fully independent media as in most of the western world, then there raises another issue of power, of control, of censorship. We take Britain as a case, since the end of the World War II you see this endless move towards monopoly ownership media--fewer and fewer owners but more and more influence. This is what the market produces. So the idea that competition is the answer to all the media problems is not proved, I think.
Z: Then what measures should be taken to check this monopoly?
M: Well, that is a good question but ! don’t have the answer. ! mean I don’t know how you can regulate market forces when media is concerned. In some countries, the government comes in and sets down new regulations or restructures, but in Britain... the British press is largely self-regulated. In other words, in Britain there are certain principles about the way the press should behave. It’s done by something called the Press Complaint Commission, which is composed of newspaper people and a number of general public. They try to keep a check on the ethical behaviour of the press. In terms of ownership and control, competition, as I said before, is the producer of monopoly structure of ownership and control.
Z: So how do you compare this state regulation with state control, which is the stereotypical image of media in a country like China?
M: I think what I mean is that in Britain the state plays almost no regular rule in relation to the press. The press has been allowed to get along with it, has been self-regulating. It really comes of broadcasting. The state--the government in Britain, that kind of government with the Labour or Conservative party--has always taken an interest in regulating broadcasting, making sure that broadcasting works for certain exact standards.
Z: And they call it the public service broadcasting philosophy?
M: They do, yes. And under that philosophy, the public service broadcasting, which is BBC, is supposed not just to provide entertainment but also have the role of being informative as educators. Now it has become very difficult for public service broadcasters to maintain the position in the increasingly competitive television market. "It has also become increasingly difficult for the government to regulate broadcasting in a greatly competitive market. So now the government’s attitude towards the regulation of broadcasting is that we have back off. They do regulate but they call it "light touch".
Z: You’ve visited China a few times, I wonder if the picture you get from the British media of China matches what you have seen personally with your own eyes in China.
M: No, it doesn’t. But I have to say I’ve only seen bits of China. I mean, China is a vast country, has a vast population so my own view is necessarily limited. But then even On limited bases I can tell you my sense of what China is like. The thing that impressed me about China is the extraordinary pace of change that began since the practice of socialist market economy in 1994. There’s very little sense of this, China’s present achievement, from the British press or British broadcasters.
Z: So do you think the media should be responsible for this?
M: It is not the problem of responsibility. I mean they could do more I suppose in introducing China to western audiences, to British audiences. But our newspapers, our television programmes, they have to be in touch with what the public wants. And the public is not very interested in the world outside Britain. So this has become a kind of policy that begins by selling the public what they are interested in. If you are not interested in these things, you don’t show any programmes about these things, you don’t write about these things, therefore the public has no chance to develop their interest in these areas. So that begins a vicious circle.
Z: Somehow Chinese media are often seen as the government’s propaganda machines in the West. Do you think that’s the case? Do you do propaganda in the West as well?
M. Of course we do. We don’t call it propaganda, we call it information. I don’t think in any cases we should rush the judgement about the state control of other people’s media because there are problems of control and censorship of our own, in news and current affairs output.
Z: Thank you very much for speaking to us.