Xinhua News Agency
Encyclopedia
The Xinhua News Agency is the official press agency
of the government of the People's Republic of China
(PRC) and the biggest center for collecting information and press conferences in the PRC. It is the largest news agency
in the PRC, ahead of the China News Service
. Xinhua is subordinate to the PRC State Council
and reports to the Communist Party of China
's Publicity and Public Information Departments. Xinhua's headquarters complex, the "pencil building", is at No. 57 Xuanwumenxi Street. It's website Xinhua.org or Xinhuanet.com is headquartered on the twentieth floor of the Dacheng Plaza (大成大厦 Dàchéng Dàshà) in Xicheng District
, Beijing
.
Xinhua employs more than 10,000 people, operates 107 foreign bureaus worldwide, and maintains 31 bureaus in China—one for each province, plus a military bureau. As most of the newspapers in China cannot afford to station correspondents abroad, or even in every Chinese province, they rely on Xinhua feeds to fill their pages. People's Daily
, for example, uses Xinhua material for approximately 25 percent of its stories. Xinhua is a publisher as well as a news agency—it owns more than 20 newspapers and a dozen magazines, and it prints in eight languages: Chinese, English, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic and Japanese.
the agency developed overseas broadcasting capabilities and established its first overseas branches. It began broadcasting to foreign countries in English from 1944. When the communists took power in China, the agency represented the Chinese Communist Party in countries and territories with which it had no diplomatic representation, such as Hong Kong
.
The agency was described as the "eyes and tongue" of the Party, observing what is important for the masses and passing on the information. A former Xinhua director, Zheng Tao, noted that the agency was a bridge between the Party, the government and the people, communicating both the demands of the people and the policies of the Party.
Like many other media organizations, Xinhua struggled to find the "right line" to use in covering the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
. Although more cautious than People's Daily in its treatment of sensitive topics during that period — such as how to commemorate reformist Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang
's April 1989 death, the then ongoing demonstrations in Beijing and elsewhere, and basic questions of press freedom and individual rights — Xinhua gave some favorable coverage to demonstrators and intellectuals who were questioning top party leaders. Even so, many Xinhua reporters were angry with top editors for not going far enough and for suppressing stories about the Tiananmen Square crackdown. For several days after the violence on 4 June, almost no-one at Xinhua did any work, and journalists demonstrated inside the Agency's Beijing compound. Government control of the media increased after the protests — top editors at the agency's bureaux in Hong Kong and Macau
were replaced with appointees who were "loyal to the mainland
" rather than those with ties to either Hong Kong or Macau.
in Shanghai
are often given an apartment, whereas at Xinhua and People's Daily this benefit is reserved for the most senior journalists.
Beijing has been cutting funding to the news agency by an average of seven percent per year over the past three years, and state funds currently cover only about 40 percent of Xinhua's costs. As a result, the agency is raising revenues through involvement in public relations
, construction
, and information-servicing businesses.
, French
, Russian
, Spanish
, and Arabic
, as well as news pictures and other kinds of news. It has made contracts to exchange news and news pictures with more than eighty foreign news agencies or political news departments. Xinhua is also responsible for handling, and in some cases, censoring reports from foreign media destined to release in China.
The agency recently began to converge its news and electronic media coverage and has increased its English coverage through its wire service and chinaview.cn web site. Xinhua recently acquired commercial real estate on New York's Times Square and is developing a staff of top-tier English-language reporters. Xinhua has also started an English-language satellite news network.
.
Xinhua and many other Chinese media organizations produce reports for the "internal" journals. Informed observers note that journalists generally like to write for the internal publications—typically, only the most senior or most capable print and broadcast reporters are given such opportunities — because they can write less polemical and more comprehensive stories without having to omit unwelcome details commonly done in the print media directed to the general public. The internal reports, written from a large number of countries, typically consist of in depth analyses of international situations and domestic attitudes towards regional issues and a certain country's perception of China.
The Chinese government's internal media publication system follows a strict hierarchical pattern designed to facilitate party control. A publication called Reference News
—which includes translated articles from abroad as well as news and commentary by senior Xinhua reporters—is delivered by Xinhua personnel, rather than by the national mail system, to officials at the working level and above. A three-to-ten-page report called Internal Reference (Neibu Cankao) is distributed to officials at the ministerial level and higher. One example was the first reports on the SARS outbreak by Xinhua which only government officials were allowed to see. The most highly classified Xinhua internal reports, known as "redhead reference" (Hong Tou Cankao) reports, are issued occasionally to the top dozen or so party and government officials.
There are signs that the internal publication system is breaking down as more information becomes widely available in China. A Hong Kong-based political journal circulated on the Chinese mainland has questioned the need for such a system in light of China's modern telecommunication
s and expanding contacts with the outside world. Internal publications are becoming less exclusive; some are now being sold illegally on the street and are increasingly available to anyone with money.
. The Xinhua News Agency established its first overseas affiliate in 1947 in London, with Samuel Chinque as publisher. Now it distributes its news in Asia
, Middle East
, Latin America
, Africa
where run the superior offices; in Hong Kong
, Macau
and many foreign countries and districts. There are more than one hundred Xinhua affiliates.
diplomatic mission
of the PRC in the territory. It was authorized by the special administrative region government to continue to represent the central government after 1997, and it was renamed The Liaison Office of the Central People's Government
in the Hong Kong SAR on 18 January 2000. The State Council
appointed Gao Siren
(高祀仁) as the director in August 2002. After renaming as liaison office
, a Xinhua Agency which is a true press office was set up.
, Egypt
in 1985. In November 2005, Xinhua News Agency opened a new office building alongside the Nile River in Cairo's Maadi district.
survey.
-listed media company Sing Tao News Corporation Limited
invested in joint ventures with Xinhua News Agency to set up a market information Web
site and offer audio and visual services planning and consulting.
, China Central Television America, and others sources.
, saying that it would have to overcome the "Xinhua stigma" of being associated with "official propaganda", and suspicions by outsiders of its credibility. In an interview with Indian media in 2007, the head of Xinhua, Tian Congmin, affirmed the problem of "historical setbacks and popular perceptions". Newsweek
criticized Xinhua as "being best known for its blind spots" regarding controversial news in China, and mentioned that its "coverage of the United States is hardly fair and balanced". Even so, "Xinhua's spin diminishes when the news doesn't involve China".
During the 2003 SARS outbreak, Xinhua was slow to release reports of the incident to the public. However, its reporting in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
was seen in as more transparent and credible as Xinhua journalists operated more freely. After the Beijing Television Cultural Center fire, cognizant of Xinhua's "tardy" reporting in contrast to bloggers, China announced the investment of 20 billion yuan to Xinhua. The vice president of the China International Publishing Group commented on this, saying that quantity of media exposure would not necessarily help perceptions of China. Rather, he said, media should focus on emphasizing Chinese culture and the Chinese way of life "to convey the message that China is a friend, not an enemy".
Xinhua for its own part has criticized the perception of Western media objectivity
, citing an incident during the 2008 Tibetan unrest
when Western media outlets used a picture of Nepalese police beating Tibetan protesters, misleadingly labeling the pictures as of Chinese police, with commentary from CNN
calling Chinese leaders "goons and thugs". CNN later apologized for the comments, but Richard Spencer of The Sunday Telegraph defended what he conceded was "biased" Western media coverage of the riots, blaming China for not allowing foreign media access to Tibet during the conflict.
State media
State media or state-owned media is media for mass communication which is ultimately controlled and/or funded by the state. These news outlets may be the sole media outlet or may exist in competition with privately-controlled media.-Overview:...
of the government of the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
(PRC) and the biggest center for collecting information and press conferences in the PRC. It is the largest news agency
News agency
A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire or news service.-History:The oldest news agency is Agence...
in the PRC, ahead of the China News Service
China News Service
The China News Service is the second largest state-owned news agency in the People's Republic of China, after the Xinhua News Agency. It serves mainly overseas Chinese and residents of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan....
. Xinhua is subordinate to the PRC State Council
State Council of the People's Republic of China
The State Council of the People's Republic of China , which is largely synonymous with the Central People's Government after 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the People's Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency...
and reports to the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
's Publicity and Public Information Departments. Xinhua's headquarters complex, the "pencil building", is at No. 57 Xuanwumenxi Street. It's website Xinhua.org or Xinhuanet.com is headquartered on the twentieth floor of the Dacheng Plaza (大成大厦 Dàchéng Dàshà) in Xicheng District
Xicheng District
Xicheng District is a district in Beijing, China. Xicheng District spans 32 square kilometres, making it the largest portion of the old city , and has 706,691 inhabitants . Its postal code is 100032. Xicheng is subdivided into 15 subdistricts of the city proper of Beijing...
, Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
.
Xinhua employs more than 10,000 people, operates 107 foreign bureaus worldwide, and maintains 31 bureaus in China—one for each province, plus a military bureau. As most of the newspapers in China cannot afford to station correspondents abroad, or even in every Chinese province, they rely on Xinhua feeds to fill their pages. People's Daily
People's Daily
The People's Daily is a daily newspaper in the People's Republic of China. The paper is an organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China , published worldwide with a circulation of 3 to 4 million. In addition to its main Chinese-language edition, it has editions in English,...
, for example, uses Xinhua material for approximately 25 percent of its stories. Xinhua is a publisher as well as a news agency—it owns more than 20 newspapers and a dozen magazines, and it prints in eight languages: Chinese, English, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic and Japanese.
History
The Xinhua press agency was started in November 1931 as the Red China News Agency and changed to its current name in 1937. During the Pacific WarPacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
the agency developed overseas broadcasting capabilities and established its first overseas branches. It began broadcasting to foreign countries in English from 1944. When the communists took power in China, the agency represented the Chinese Communist Party in countries and territories with which it had no diplomatic representation, such as Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
.
The agency was described as the "eyes and tongue" of the Party, observing what is important for the masses and passing on the information. A former Xinhua director, Zheng Tao, noted that the agency was a bridge between the Party, the government and the people, communicating both the demands of the people and the policies of the Party.
Like many other media organizations, Xinhua struggled to find the "right line" to use in covering the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
. Although more cautious than People's Daily in its treatment of sensitive topics during that period — such as how to commemorate reformist Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang was a leader of the People's Republic of China who served as both Chairman and Party General Secretary. Hu joined the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s, and rose to prominence as a comrade of Deng Xiaoping...
's April 1989 death, the then ongoing demonstrations in Beijing and elsewhere, and basic questions of press freedom and individual rights — Xinhua gave some favorable coverage to demonstrators and intellectuals who were questioning top party leaders. Even so, many Xinhua reporters were angry with top editors for not going far enough and for suppressing stories about the Tiananmen Square crackdown. For several days after the violence on 4 June, almost no-one at Xinhua did any work, and journalists demonstrated inside the Agency's Beijing compound. Government control of the media increased after the protests — top editors at the agency's bureaux in Hong Kong and Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
were replaced with appointees who were "loyal to the mainland
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
" rather than those with ties to either Hong Kong or Macau.
Finance
In the past, Xinhua was able to attract the top young journalists emerging from the universities or otherwise newly entering the field, but it can no longer do so easily because of the appeal and resources of other newspapers and periodicals and the greater glamour of television and radio jobs. For example, mid-level reporters for the Xinmin Evening NewsXinmin Evening News
Xinmin Evening News , formerly known as Xinmin Po, is a newspaper published since September, 1929 in Shanghai, China.It is now owned by Wenhui-xinmin United Press Group...
in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
are often given an apartment, whereas at Xinhua and People's Daily this benefit is reserved for the most senior journalists.
Beijing has been cutting funding to the news agency by an average of seven percent per year over the past three years, and state funds currently cover only about 40 percent of Xinhua's costs. As a result, the agency is raising revenues through involvement in public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
, construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...
, and information-servicing businesses.
Reach
Today, Xinhua News Agency delivers its news across the world in six languages: Chinese, EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, as well as news pictures and other kinds of news. It has made contracts to exchange news and news pictures with more than eighty foreign news agencies or political news departments. Xinhua is also responsible for handling, and in some cases, censoring reports from foreign media destined to release in China.
The agency recently began to converge its news and electronic media coverage and has increased its English coverage through its wire service and chinaview.cn web site. Xinhua recently acquired commercial real estate on New York's Times Square and is developing a staff of top-tier English-language reporters. Xinhua has also started an English-language satellite news network.
Internal media
The Chinese media's internal publication system, in which certain journals are published exclusively for government and party officials, provides information and analysis which are not generally available to the public. The State values these internal reports because they contain much of China's most sensitive, controversial, and high-quality investigative journalismInvestigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
.
Xinhua and many other Chinese media organizations produce reports for the "internal" journals. Informed observers note that journalists generally like to write for the internal publications—typically, only the most senior or most capable print and broadcast reporters are given such opportunities — because they can write less polemical and more comprehensive stories without having to omit unwelcome details commonly done in the print media directed to the general public. The internal reports, written from a large number of countries, typically consist of in depth analyses of international situations and domestic attitudes towards regional issues and a certain country's perception of China.
The Chinese government's internal media publication system follows a strict hierarchical pattern designed to facilitate party control. A publication called Reference News
Reference News
Reference News , first published on November 7, 1931, is a newspaper daily which has the largest circulation in mainland China with 3 million. It is published by Xinhua News Agency...
—which includes translated articles from abroad as well as news and commentary by senior Xinhua reporters—is delivered by Xinhua personnel, rather than by the national mail system, to officials at the working level and above. A three-to-ten-page report called Internal Reference (Neibu Cankao) is distributed to officials at the ministerial level and higher. One example was the first reports on the SARS outbreak by Xinhua which only government officials were allowed to see. The most highly classified Xinhua internal reports, known as "redhead reference" (Hong Tou Cankao) reports, are issued occasionally to the top dozen or so party and government officials.
There are signs that the internal publication system is breaking down as more information becomes widely available in China. A Hong Kong-based political journal circulated on the Chinese mainland has questioned the need for such a system in light of China's modern telecommunication
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
s and expanding contacts with the outside world. Internal publications are becoming less exclusive; some are now being sold illegally on the street and are increasingly available to anyone with money.
Headquarters and regional sectors
The Xinhua headquarters is located in BeijingBeijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
. The Xinhua News Agency established its first overseas affiliate in 1947 in London, with Samuel Chinque as publisher. Now it distributes its news in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
where run the superior offices; in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
and many foreign countries and districts. There are more than one hundred Xinhua affiliates.
Xinhua in Hong Kong
Xinhua's branch in Hong Kong was not just a press office. It was named a news agency under the special historic conditions before the territory's sovereignty was transferred from Britain to the PRC, because the PRC did not recognise British sovereignty over the colony, and an embassy or consulate cannot be set up within what it considered its soil. Until 1997, it served as the de factoDe facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
diplomatic mission
Diplomatic mission
A diplomatic mission is a group of people from one state or an international inter-governmental organisation present in another state to represent the sending state/organisation in the receiving state...
of the PRC in the territory. It was authorized by the special administrative region government to continue to represent the central government after 1997, and it was renamed The Liaison Office of the Central People's Government
Central People's Government
The Central People's Government is the central government of the People's Republic of China in Beijing. According to the 1982 Constitution, "Central People's Government" is synonymous with the State Council.-History:...
in the Hong Kong SAR on 18 January 2000. The State Council
State Council of the People's Republic of China
The State Council of the People's Republic of China , which is largely synonymous with the Central People's Government after 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the People's Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency...
appointed Gao Siren
Gao Siren
Gao Siren was the director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from 2002 to 2009. From 2000 to 2002 he was the deputy director of the Liaison Office.-External Links:*...
(高祀仁) as the director in August 2002. After renaming as liaison office
Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
The Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an organ of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China.-Description:...
, a Xinhua Agency which is a true press office was set up.
Xinhua in Cairo
Xinhua opened its Middle East Regional Bureau in CairoCairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
in 1985. In November 2005, Xinhua News Agency opened a new office building alongside the Nile River in Cairo's Maadi district.
Xinhua online
The Xinhua News Agency runs the prominent news website Xinhuanet.com, which provides news in six different languages. The domain xinhuanet.com attracted 430,000 unique visitors between February 2008 and February 2009 according to a Compete.comCompete.com
Compete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world...
survey.
Partnerships
In 2001, Hong KongHong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
-listed media company Sing Tao News Corporation Limited
Sing Tao News Corporation
Sing Tao News Corporation Limited is a Hong Kong listed company. It is mainly focused on the business of Media Ownership & Services, Human Capital Management, as well as Broadband Content & Distribution. It was formerly called Global China Group Holdings Limited...
invested in joint ventures with Xinhua News Agency to set up a market information Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
site and offer audio and visual services planning and consulting.
Tantao News
In its drive to globalize its content and reach new audiences, Xinhua has entered into a partnership with CNEWSCO, LLC, an apolitical American company. A key element of the relationship is the editorial freedom CNEWSCO enjoys to select and publish Xinhua multimedia content under a new brand Tantao. The Tantao Global News Network focuses on providing global news coverage on a variety of topics and perspectives originating mainly from Chinese news and media sources. Content is aggregated, published and syndicated from major Chinese news organizations including the Xinhua News Agency, Shanghai Media GroupShanghai Media Group
Shanghai Media Group , under the Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group , is a multimedia television and radio broadcasting, news and Internet company...
, China Central Television America, and others sources.
Credibility
Bloomberg Businessweek commented on the opening of Xinhua FinanceXinhua Finance
Xinhua Finance Limited formed in 1999 is engaged in the provision of financial information and services, primarily in the China market. It is headquartered in Shanghai. It is listed on the Tokyo Mothers Board . The company's subsidiary, Xinhua Finance Media Ltd, is listed on NASDAQ...
, saying that it would have to overcome the "Xinhua stigma" of being associated with "official propaganda", and suspicions by outsiders of its credibility. In an interview with Indian media in 2007, the head of Xinhua, Tian Congmin, affirmed the problem of "historical setbacks and popular perceptions". Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
criticized Xinhua as "being best known for its blind spots" regarding controversial news in China, and mentioned that its "coverage of the United States is hardly fair and balanced". Even so, "Xinhua's spin diminishes when the news doesn't involve China".
During the 2003 SARS outbreak, Xinhua was slow to release reports of the incident to the public. However, its reporting in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
2008 Sichuan earthquake
The 2008 Sichuan earthquake or the Great Sichuan Earthquake was a deadly earthquake that measured at 8.0 Msand 7.9 Mw occurred at 14:28:01 CST...
was seen in as more transparent and credible as Xinhua journalists operated more freely. After the Beijing Television Cultural Center fire, cognizant of Xinhua's "tardy" reporting in contrast to bloggers, China announced the investment of 20 billion yuan to Xinhua. The vice president of the China International Publishing Group commented on this, saying that quantity of media exposure would not necessarily help perceptions of China. Rather, he said, media should focus on emphasizing Chinese culture and the Chinese way of life "to convey the message that China is a friend, not an enemy".
Xinhua for its own part has criticized the perception of Western media objectivity
Objectivity (journalism)
Parent article: Journalism ethics and standardsObjectivity is a significant principle of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity can refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities.- Definitions :In the context...
, citing an incident during the 2008 Tibetan unrest
2008 Tibetan unrest
The 2008 Tibetan unrest, also known from its Chinese name as the 3•14 Riots, was a series of riots, protests, and demonstrations that started in Tibetan regional capital of Lhasa and spread to other Tibetan areas and a number of monasteries including outside the Tibet Autonomous Region...
when Western media outlets used a picture of Nepalese police beating Tibetan protesters, misleadingly labeling the pictures as of Chinese police, with commentary from CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
calling Chinese leaders "goons and thugs". CNN later apologized for the comments, but Richard Spencer of The Sunday Telegraph defended what he conceded was "biased" Western media coverage of the riots, blaming China for not allowing foreign media access to Tibet during the conflict.
See also
- China Xinhua News Network CorporationChina Xinhua News Network CorporationThe China Xinhua News Network Corporation is a Chinese state-owned television network owned by the Xinhua News Agency that began broadcasting on January 1, 2010...
- China Securities JournalChina Securities JournalThe China Securities Journal is a national securities newspaper, sponsored by Xinhua News Agency. It is based in Beijing, and has two offices in Shanghai and Shenzhen...
- Media of the People's Republic of ChinaMedia of the People's Republic of ChinaMedia of the People's Republic of China primarily consists of television, newspapers, radio, and magazines. Since 2000, the Internet has also emerged as an important communications medium....