The f lourishing of investigative reports in the 1...
The term “investigative journalism” gradually entered the public discourse in the early 1990s. Prior to that period, Chinese journalists seemed to be more in favor of the term “in-depth reports,” or in a more euphem istical way of saying, “negative reports”.
Investigative journalism fascinates Chinese journalists and media organizations.They are no strangers to the achievements of their western counterparts. Watergate reports have long been esteemed as a classic example of media supervision in textbooks of international journalism history used by J-Schools across China. The two young Washington Post reporters teamed up to debunk the so-called “third-rate burglary [10]”at the Democratic Party’s National Comm ittee off ice and expose one of the most astounding political intrigues in America history causing the downfall of Richard Nixon. The achievements are regard as a m ilestone in journalism history in China as well.
The media industry regards investigative reporting as the crown jewel of journalism practices. Investigative reporters are well-respected by their colleagues.The tim ing was ripe for investigative reporting to thrive in the early 1990s.
Even “negative or critical reports” used to be frowned upon by authorities.However, the overall media environment loosened up in 1992 when late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping delivered his famous “Southern Tour Speech” in the port city of Shenzhen. In the speech, Deng called for thought emancipation to deepen the reform and opening-up cause. He pointed out that “in order to w in the comparative advantages over capitalism, socialism must bravely assim ilate and learn from all the cultural achievements created by the human society and all the advanced operational mechanisms and management approaches of all countries in the world, including advanced capitalist countries.” [11]
The wake-up call paved the way for the marketization of China’s economy and accelerated the diversification of China’s media sector to meet the grow ing public demand for informative and creative coverage on social issues of w ide public concerns.
The tim ing was right for the country’s fledgling investigative journalists to take off and establish their creditability. A def ining event was the debut of Focus Interview (焦点访谈) in April 1994, a 15-m inute TV magazine show produced and broadcast by CCTV (China Central Television).(https://www.daowen.com)
Focus Interview can be regarded as the CCTV equivalent of BBC One’s Panorama. It’s been CCTV’s f lagship investigative show since its birth and helped cultivate some of the best investigative journalists in China. The show focuses on“follow-up reports of current affairs, analyses of news background, hot social issues perception and topical discussions about public concerns”. [12] It quickly won over the hearts of the audience all over China in its early years for those snappy investigative pieces exposing social injustice, inequality, and corrupt local off icials.
Focus Interview was the f irst TV show featuring extensive use of secret f ilm ing and undercover reporting in China. Two months after its debut, the show aired an episode on illegal invoice vendors at the Shanghai Railway Station, a major transport hub in the city center. Devices like pinhole camera or button camera were still unavailable back in those days. The camera was set up 40 meters away, well hidden in the crowds. The reporter disguised as a potential buyer and approached a female vendor to bargain. The whole sequence had a strong detective story feel to it, which was seldom seen on Chinese television back then. The audience were amazed. Provincial television stations followed suit and produced their own shares of investigative features. Thanks to the advent of such sneaky pieces, secret f ilm ing and undercover reports became the standard procedures of investigative reporting for video journalists in China. [13]
The exposure of w rongdoings by corrupt off icials earned the respect and trust of the Chinese public for Focus Interview. The show broadcast about 300 episodes in a year, 200 of them were negative or critical reports in the 1990s. Realizing the show’s huge potential to galvanize public support for its agenda, the Chinese central government endorsed the show unequivocally. The then Chinese prem ier Zhu Rongji inspected CCTV in 1998 and met the production team of Focus Interview.In a rare exception, he w rote up a calligraphy scroll for the team, praising them as “supervision by public opinion, [14] the people’s mouthpiece, the government’s m irror and the reform’s vanguard”. [15] He even proposed his own pitch to the show’s staff — sandstorms in northern China. The show took on the task and put together a f ive-part series in the week from April 21st to 25th, 2001. These features focused on the country’s disapparing forests, imbalanced water conserrancy, w ithering wetlands and desertif ication, sounding the alarm for ecological crisis.
In the peak of its popularity, Focus Interview enjoys huge public trust.Thousands of letters and telephone inquiries from enthusiastic viewers nationw ide flooded the show on daily basis. Some farmers travelled all the way from their remote villages to CCTV’s headquarters in Beijing to deposit petitions at the reception desk of the show, hoping that their voices could be heard. They had to wait in a long queue and no one seemed to m ind.
To some extent, Focus Interview def ines the range of subject matters and the technical standards of investigative reporting in China. Its most popular episodes exposed social injustice suffered by disadvantageous groups and w rongdoings of corrupt officials, triggering w ide social debates and authorities’ problem-solving efforts. With the success of the show, “supervision by public opinion” has become a catchphrase and a generally accepted way of referring to investigative reporting.The Central Comm ittee of the Communist Party of China even included the term into the ruling party’s intra-party supervision regulations. [16] The regulation has made it clear that “new s media should adhere to the unity of the Party and the people,stick to correct political guidance, strengthen the supervision by public opinion and conduct anatom ical analysis into representative cases to play its vigilante role”.