Detached disseminator, populist watchdog and facilitative change agent: The professional role perception of foreign correspondents in China

Abstract

Amidst the debate over a ‘global journalistic culture’, this study, drawing on Hallin and Mancini’s typology of media systems and Hanitzsch’s deconstruction of journalistic role perception, looks into how foreign correspondents in China perceive their professional roles, and how their role perceptions differ across different media systems. Based on a survey analysis of 101 journalists, the study identifies three role types among China correspondents: detached disseminator, populist watchdog, and facilitative change agent. A majority of respondents perceive their professional role as non-facilitative and non-advocate, disputing the ‘hostile foreign forces’ allegation China usually employs to discredit foreign correspondents. No significant national variance is detected in the relative size of the three role types, and journalists from different media systems all value objectivity, neutrality, detachment, as well as a strong audience orientation, echoing the global homogenizing tendency in certain components of journalistic culture. Yet, strong national variance prevails in key dimensions, including a watchdog role for the host country, advocacy orientation and power distance with home government, largely consistent with the respective journalistic culture in each media system, suggesting that national journalistic culture still holds a strong grip on foreign correspondence.

“Otherness” and Self-Censorship in the Land of Coups: Greek Correspondents in Turkey Pre- and Post-Coup Attempt

“…The national identity seen as the opponent 'other' neighbor often puts obstacles and determines the way journalists as bearers of 'otherness' exercise their work, verifying the findings of other researches about national journalistic cultures which represent the opponent 'other' neighbor (Sun, 2007) or reporting from an authoritarian host country (Zeng, 2018). Zeng (2018) claims that China often tends to use authoritarian control over foreign correspondents aiming at discrediting them. Sun (2007) examines the Japanese correspondents' reporting from China and claims that the correspondents struggle to balance within the authoritarian Chinese hosts; this process makes their job challenging in fear of sanctions in China.…”

How China’s flagship news program frames “the West”: Foreign news coverage of CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo before and during Xi Jinping’s presidency

“…An alternative explanation of the increase in negative frames identified in Xinwen Lianbo's coverage of Western countries could be that this development was a countermeasure by China resulting from the increasingly negative coverage of China by Western media in recent years (Zeng, 2017). At this time of rising international tension, it is possible that Western media are also framing China less positively than in the past.…”

Just Listen! The importance of listening in foreign correspondents–governments relationships

“…Scholars have addressed various aspects of this specific reporters' niche, mostly (but not only) in conflict zones (Gillers, 2018;Tumber and Webster, 2006), such as the correspondents' degree of engagement (Hamilton and Tworek, 2019;Zeng, 2018) and factors affecting the content of stories covered by the correspondents in the field (Baloch and Andresen, 2020;Hess, 1996). These factors include a wide range of sociodemographic elements such as gender and ethnicity; professional factors such as indepth relationships with sources; and organizational factors such as administration or technology (Giotis and Hall, 2021).…”