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By Rong Xiaoqing (Global Times)


My mom won't like that I am writing this piece.


Like many Chinese people, she follows the traditional view that if you are taking advantage of something, you should only express your appreciation, not your complaints.


But as a journalist trained in the US, I was told by professors and editors not to hesitate to criticize anything, even if it is the major advertiser for your own newspaper or a charity you admire a lot.


Nothing is perfect, and the US journalists' mantra is that freedom of speech is an essential right. So I decided to exercise my right to take a close look at the right itself.


While I am writing this, my media colleagues in China are fretting because of the recent incident at Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly when the paper's exclusive interview with US President Obama was delayed for publication and severely cut because authority insisted on checking the content before it went public.


Hardly a surprise, but it did once again make those of us working in the US feel lucky. Here journalists won't get the do's and don'ts list from the authorities and other than the editor, no one has the right to read your copy before publication, let alone alter it.


US authorities sometimes also try to interfere in editorial matters, but the courts, thanks to the First Amendment that protects freedom of speech, thwart most of the attempts.


In fact, even within the Western world, journalists' right to tell a story has much better pro-tection in the US than in many other countries.


The US protections may be good for journalists, but the reality is that not everyone is as lucky as we are. The President of Columbia University Lee Bollinger was blasted two years ago for allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the university.


And while American computer manufacturers were complaining earlier this year about the Chinese government's plans (later aborted) to demand all new computers carry Green Dam software, TV manufacturers in the US have long been required to install the V-chip, a device that allows parents to block their kids from accessing certain TV programs.


Even in American journalism, many people find that they don't have much freedom to speak their minds.


It is true that there is no such thing as a Propaganda Department here, but almost all entities have a public relations office, which can work in a similar way.


In a more sophisticated corporate empire like the US, the function of the PR office is not only spreading "good" news and trying to prevent "bad" news. By designating a spokesman, a company also sends out a message to the rest of its employees to keep silent.


This doesn't only happen in the private sector. Few government officials will talk to the media before being cleared by their PR office.


In New York the 130,000 teachers in the public schools are not allowed to talk to reporters before getting approval from the Department of Education.


It's arguable that government agencies and corporations have rights to protect their privacy. But many times people decline to talk for fear of being punished, even when the topic is nothing related to the employer.


One banker recently told me "the company wants to be low key, and we were told not to talk to a reporter about anything." He gave me that answer even though I was only asking about his experience as a new immigrant in the US.


But still, a more dangerous threat to freedom of speech in the US may not be the top down iron hand but the self censorship engaged in by people every day.


This is a country in which a series of laws have been enacted to try to deal with long standing economic, racial and gender inequality. But at the same time this has created over sensitivity and a culture of victimization among some people. As a result, honesty often has to give way to political correctness and opinions have sometimes to be zipped away.


Using "African American" to replace "black" and "undocumented immigrants" for "illegal" may only seem like modest steps toward political correctness, but if a white manager doesn't dare to tell off poor performing black staff so that he avoids a racist label then something is just not quite right.


Sometimes, honesty can lead to a more direct loss.


In New York City, if a hair salon lists different prices for male and female clients on its window, it can be fined $500. This is the case even though everyone knows women's hair usually takes longer to cut than men's.


Of course all of this isn't quite the equivalent of Chinese media censorship.


But the question of freedom of speech can be as much about grays as about black and white.



The author is a New York-based journalist.

netawhile

Spoken by someone who has seen both sides and sees the finer points of a growing restriction on free speech that silently erodes the 1st amendment rights.  Is it indicative that there will always be controls in some form or another?  It goes far beyond not being allowed to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater.  Yes, it is a critical view of the one that gives the freedom, but not just for the sake of criticism.  There are many things that are kept from the eyes of the citizens in the U.S. to maintain social order and control reactions.  The thing that comes to mind is the concealment of casualties returning from the battle front.
This information is kept very hushed.

Rotlieber

What Rong Xiaoqing has observed is correct. But the the issue of molding opinion by the powerful interests in the US - which are in the first place business intererests, followed by the government - is very complex and very subtle. Often it is not so much a question of news media as of popular culture which has a great deal to do with forming 'public opinion' - and public opinion is then something that the news media tend to cater to. A few years ago, Hollywood - that is the big businesses involved in the production of films - produced a spate of films that essentially supported separatism in Tibet. Not directly, but by romanticizing the feudal rule in the old days in Tibet and demonizing the Chinese government. Such films help create a climate where "everybody knows" that Tibet is "oppressed" by China. The facts aren't even discussed as the popular culture has created a climate in which an attempt to state the facts is seen as "doing propaganda for China."
Big money endows universities and universities train journalists and other professionals - experts in Asian Studies, Middle East Studies, Latin American studies, foreign policy, economics, etc., etc. If one wants a career in those fields, he or she must conform to certain norms already laid down in those educational institutions and then practiced in the business world.
Big money interests in general set the paramiters of debate, determining what is 'balanced' and what is 'too extreme' to be reported. In recent US presidential elections, for example, candidates that had markedly alternative views were systematically excluded from coverage - whether by order or by self-censorship, I don't know. Dennis Kucinich among the Democrats and Ron Paul a libertarian Republican were largely marginalized. Needless to say, third parties were totally ignored. A large 'middle of the road' concensus has been created and is constantly being re-created by the moulding of opinion long before the journalist sits down to type up a report.
Until the American Civil War in the 1860s, the US had the 'luxury' of being able to develop without spending much money on defense of its borders because of the geographical location of the country, set off from other powers by vast oceans, In the 20th Century, the power of American capital enabled the US media and pop culture to dominate the domestic scene almost entirely. This wasn't accomplished by jamming radio signals or by banning foreign newspapers. It was accomplished by the power of money. It was expensive to buy foreign papers. It was hard to follow shortwave radio signals. Modern media - internet, etc., will break this down, but it will be a gradual process because few Americans are inclined to look outside the US for information, and within the US 'public opinion' continues to be moulded within certain limits that don't bring into question the fundamental capitalist structure or the powerful wealthy interests that control the system.
So, while the journalist typing up his report may not have a censor waiting to cut lines from his copy, the story that he or she is writing up has already been chosen or accepted because it will 'interest readers' meaning that it will conform to certain expectations of the people who run the newspaper or radio station for which the journalist works. This is a form of the self-censorship that Rong referred to, but it goes way beyond using 'politically correct' terms.