Last Saturday, November 8, was China’s National Journalists’ Day—often an occasion for mixed feelings among China’s beleaguered independent journalists. The WeChat account 磨稿子 Mó Gǎozi, or “Polishing Manuscripts,” for example, marked the date by interviewing three formerly prominent investigative reporters—including Jian Guangzhou, who broke the Sanlu milk powder scandal—about their lives since leaving the field. “These three colleagues all left journalism a long time ago, and their current occupations are all fairly similar: Jian Guangzhou started selling liquor, Kang Shaojian started selling meat, and Yang Wanguo selling insurance. For three former titans of investigative journalism to all happen to become salesmen may be the industry’s deepest unspoken sorrow.”
Nor were these isolated cases: only last month, CDT Chinese archived another article on three former investigative journalists and their exits from the industry, only one of whom—Jian Guangzhou—was featured in the Mo Gaozi piece. On Saturday, the WeChat account Print Media Night Watchman highlighted how few news outlets now conduct investigative journalism in China—and at the same time, how significant their impact can still be. (All links have been added to provide context.)
Based on our daily monitoring, there are now only 36 domestic news-media organizations that still conduct investigative reporting (that is, reporting that supervises official power).
Our data show that over the past 12 months, The Paper, Red Star News, Jinyun News, and Dafeng News were the most prolific outlets, averaging four to nine [investigative] reports per month. In media circles, this publication rate is enough to be considered “high frequency.”
The other 32 outlets each published fewer than three investigative reports per month, on average. Our count includes some outlets that publish as little as one piece every four months.
Even with such limited output, these 36 outlets’ contributions to the development of rule of law in China have still been enormous. For example, Southern Weekly and others doggedly pursued the issue of Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, and their constant stream of reporting had an enormous impact on public opinion. On June 30 of this year, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued “Provisions on Lawfully Regulating the Application and Oversight of Residential Surveillance in a Designated Location.” By reiterating the “residential” character of the designated location, and explicitly stipulating that officers investigating a case may not enter that location or conduct interrogations there, these provisions aim to ensure that tragedies like those of Bao Qinrui, Xing Yanjun, and others will not be repeated.
[…] Today is National Journalists’ Day. We salute these media organizations, and hope they are able to persevere. [Chinese]
At China Media Project, David Bandurski noted a National Journalists’ Day lament by former state-media editor Hu Xijin about many outlets’ over-reliance on official statements instead of even the tamest journalistic investigation:
Hu’s reference to “blue background” statements points to the tongbao (通报), official notices increasingly used by local police and government agencies to announce incidents without allowing the most basic reporting, to say nothing of more in-depth journalistic investigation. These terse, formulaic “white on blue” (蓝底白字) announcements have proliferated across Chinese social media in recent years, often serving as the sole official word on accidents, deaths, and other sensitive local news events.
They are often picked up by prominent news outlets such as Shanghai’s The Paper (澎湃) and The Beijing News (新京报). While they may be attractive sources of free and politically safe content, they have no independent verification and are often worthless as information.
Hu Xijin argued that such rigid controls “sacrifice the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of communication, and more importantly, undermine society’s long-term resilience and capacity to withstand pressure.” He called on authorities to show greater confidence and reduce restrictions on journalists.
[…] True to form, the veteran Global Times editor took a bow to the Party and its press control principles even as he decried the damage done to journalism by the rising tide of blue notices — making clear that he was not talking on China’s Journalists Day about the type of journalism practiced in free societies. He emphasized that journalists must be able to play their proper role under CCP guidance. “The community of journalists is a supporting force for orderly social governance under Party leadership, an organic and important part of it,” Hu wrote. “Once this force is weakened, the harm to society’s long-term harmonious operation will definitely outweigh the benefits.” [Source]
Veteran journalist Peng Yuanwen addressed the same trend last year in a WeChat post highlighted by CDT Chinese editors as one of the most notable pieces of censored content in 2024:
Reporters in the past probably couldn’t have imagined how important “waiting for the official announcement” would become to news production today. Put it this way: for any news event that is even slightly “sensitive,” if there is no official announcement, it will not be reported on at all.
[…] Of course, it wasn’t always like this. Even three or four years ago, “waiting for the official announcement” before reporting on a story was an uncommon phenomenon. Of course, it was nice if an official announcement happened to be available, but if it wasn’t, media outlets would simply conduct their own investigations and fact-checking before publishing articles on the story. But in the past two or three years, the practice of waiting for the official announcement has become ubiquitous: it would be fair to describe it as the norm, with very few exceptions.
The reason for this is simple. An official announcement by government authorities serves as both an endorsement and a permission slip. If a media outlet later encounters trouble over a story it has published, it can point to the official announcement as a sort of disclaimer of responsibility.
The surface manifestation of this phenomenon is that a considerable portion of media reports are now cribbed directly from official announcements—sometimes, not even a word has been changed, nor any context added.
The problem with waiting for an official announcement before reporting on a story is that it renders the media pointless. Setting other issues aside and just focusing on the issue of timeliness, if media reports always appear later than the official announcement, does the media even have any value? [Source]
Another celebrated Chinese journalist, Li Wei’ao, also alluded to overreliance on official notices in his annual National Journalists’ Day review of his work over the past year:
While I was working on this roundup, I had one eye on a few episodes of the British TV drama “The Hack” [a dramatization of the News International phone hacking scandal].
It had me hooked from the opening scene in which the male lead, a seasoned reporter like myself, explains how much of the British news media had become “passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material,” and that “newspapers use press releases rather than getting their own stories.”
That’s right, “passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material,” and “newspapers use press releases rather than getting their own stories.”
These few lines took my breath away.
Maybe we’re not alone! Maybe there are many places around the world where “waiting for [official] notice,” “reading official statements,” “reprinting wire-service reports,” and “following instructions from above” are coming to dominate, if they haven’t already. But that’s not real news work, not the reporter’s true vocation.
Otherwise, how can we dare call ourselves journalists at all? How can we claim to be worthy of the profession?
Let’s all take heart from this, as we mark “National Journalists’ Day.” [Chinese]
Last year, CDT translated excerpts from Li Wei’ao’s post detailing the eight of his 54 published articles that had been deleted between National Journalists’ Day 2023 and 2024. This year’s toll was ten deletions out of 43—proportionately, almost double—but the censored pieces’ dominant theme of official corruption remained more or less the same.
