January 9, 2004


BOB GARFIELD: SARS is back in the news this week, but this time, instead of face masks, the image most associated with the virus is the civet cat. Chinese authorities have fingered that animal as a possible source of SARS and have begun exterminating them by the thousand. This pro-active response from the government is in stark contrast to its clampdown on information last year which contributed to the rapid spread of SARS, but rather than learn from the lessons in transparency, the repressive Chinese government is up to its old tricks. Last week, police paid a visit to the offices of Southern Metropolis Daily, a muckraking regional newspaper that first reported the return of SARS. The reporter who broke the story, and her editor, were detained and have been placed on leave. Orville Schell has been following these events and joins us now from the Journalism School at the University of California at Berkeley where he is dean. Professor, welcome back to OTM.

ORVILLE SCHELL: Pleasure to be on.

BOB GARFIELD:Now the reason for the raid and for the firings given by the Chinese government was "financial irregularities." Is there any reason to believe that this had anything to do with a financial crime?

ORVILLE SCHELL:Well, usually there isn't. One can't say certainly, but this is an acceptable offense in China, whereas it is unacceptable to arrest people for political crimes. There's a very long history of sort of cat and mouse between the Department of Propaganda, which controls the media outlets, and these media outlets that are ever-more market-driven. So they've got to meet their bottom line. To do that, they have to be very edgy, and they have to provide stories that people want to read. So there's a contradiction inherent in this new proposition of sort of market-Leninism in which the press finds itself all over China.

BOB GARFIELD:When we spoke last year, the first SARS epidemic was in full swing, and I asked you whether the embarrassment that the Chinese government experienced after the cover-up would open up a sort of Pandora's box of free expression by the media, which seems to have happened. Is what's happening now that the government is just trying to slam shut Pandora's box?

ORVILLE SCHELL:I think we did see a spasm of opening up, and some of these publications had some other interesting investigative stories that, from the perspective of many in the party, were embarrassing. And now what we see is an attempt to try to sort of bring the press back under the umbrella of control, lest they get the habit of thinking that they have broken loose in some structural and long-term way. But China tends to operate in curious cycles. You know, it will be free, and then it'll get too free, and then the government will start cracking down again. It's something like those metals who--whose properties are that if you heat it, it, it straightens out, but when it cools, it returns to its original shape.

BOB GARFIELD:Do you even get the sense that these spasms are jerking freedom two steps forward, and one step back -- or maybe is it one step forward and two steps back? Over time will there be a net increase in free expression, or is it just going to get more and more retrograde?

ORVILLE SCHELL:Well, [LAUGHS] you know, that question lies at the heart of the matter. I think we do see two steps forward and some - one step backwards, and sometimes we see three steps backwards. But if you compare the press in China today to the way it was 20 years ago in the early '80s, I think you would have to conclude that it is more constrained that it was then, because at that point, just as the reforms began, the official press was sort of more liberated than it is now. Now we see the commercial press somewhat more open and somewhat more vibrant, but the problem is that all of these changes are acted out against the backdrop of a system which believes that the press cannot, should not, be independent of the government itself.

BOB GARFIELD:Well, you know, tell me if I'm just grossly over-stating here, but it seems that for all of the hopes and visions of a free society evolving from open markets, at the moment we're simply talking about a country that is a fascist state exploiting cheap labor and working its way into the world economy without working its way at all into the community of nations.

ORVILLE SCHELL:Well, you know, as somebody who first started studying China back in the late '50s, I would have to say that I've been quite amazed over the last 15 years at the degree to which, after the shock of 1989 and, and all of the market reforms since, at the degree to which they've been able to maintain control over certain key sectors, such as the media, dissidents, politics. You know the system has not failed! But I think at the core of the system of control is a sense that as long as the party can deliver economically people are willing to put up with much less freedom. The minute that people don't any longer feel that they're on some sort of an escalator that's economically taking them upwards, then I think we may end up with a very different situation. And then of course the media becomes very critical in explaining what is wrong. As long as they can keep the engine of growth rates high, they probably won't have to confront the question of why don't they have a free media -- why don't they have, you know, due process -- why don't they have rights.

BOB GARFIELD: Professor Schell, as always, thank you so much.

ORVILLE SCHELL: Always a pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Orville Schell is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD:Coming up, a conservative radio talk radio host gets a liberal makeover, and quite possibly the only report you will ever hear on the D.C. Primary. This is On the Media, from NPR. [FUNDING CREDITS]

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