| dc.description.abstract | During China's Communist years, especially from 1980 to the present, American reporters who believe in their right to seek information, have operated within a system which suspects and hinders their work. Beijing's view of journalism is wholly different from that of even the most suspicious Western democracy. During this period there were times of what the Chinese call "tightening and loosening:" of intimidation of reporters, followed by relative relaxation, succeeded by harassment.
In addition to the harassment, one of the endemic dilemmas for American reporters in this atmosphere is official lying. In 1979 an editor at the Chinese Communist Party's leading newspaper People's Daily told me: " Lies in our newspapers are like rat droppings in clear soup: they are both obvious and disgusting. "
Such lying, which remains persistent, is a central problem for American reporters in Communist societies and never more so than in China. Yet, in May 1989, I saw a column of Chinese journalists from the Communist Party's official newspaper march into the crowds in Tiananmen Square holding a banner 25 feet wide and bearing the words " Don't force us to lie." And for three weeks, the longest continuous period of press freedom since Mao's triumph in 1949, papers all over China carried stories which would not have disgraced a British or American reporter; stories, moreover, on a sensational and sensitive subject - urban demonstrations against the commanding heights of state power. After the Tiananmen uprising had been crushed, on the night of June 3-4 1989, the reporters and editors who wrote and commissioned those stories would pay for their courage and professionalism with their careers, their liberty, and in some cases their lives. | en_US |
