Charlie Custer

Today, the lovely folks at the Asia Society published an interview with Kaiser Kuo. As is typical of both Kaiser and the Asia Society, the entire thing is well worth a read, but working in the media myself I was particularly interested in this section:

“While speaking truth to power and reporting what “the man”—whether governments or big businesses—doesn’t want reported are I would agree the right approach when covering domestic stories for a domestic media market, we have to remember that in a domestic market (say, the U.S.) the readership can be assumed to have much of the context already. They live there. The whole paper is filled with stories on America, too, so those mud-raking pieces, those exposes on malfeasance by some politician or company, can be seen in proportion to all else that’s happening.

“But when you’re writing about a country on the other side of the world, I believe your mission has to change, because the readership back home simply doesn’t have the context, and doesn’t get a sense of proportion. When your paper has a very high proportion of strongly critical stories, the readership’s idea of that place becomes skewed. And so we end up with a real disconnect: China, to some notional middle American reader, becomes a place where there’s nothing but political and religious repression, toxic air, venal officials, crass nouveaux riches, and heavy-handed censorship.”

For years, my response to critics of critical media coverage in China has been that the Western media is critical of everything, but I must admit that Kaiser has a point. Certainly, it would be difficult to argue that the average American reader (for example) has the kind of contextual understanding of Chinese life as they do American life. So while the American news being full of blood and crime doesn’t typically lead Americans to believe their home country is an anarchic hellhole, the China news being full of protests and censorship may well lead some readers to believe that that’s all there is to life in China.

Of course, very few Western media outlets produce exclusively critical coverage. Even so, the scales are definitely tipped in favor of drama and conflict, and in China that’s mostly found through censorship, repression, toxic air, venal officials, etc. I think it’s fair to concede that yes: it would be better if Western coverage of China presented a more complete picture of life in the Middle Kingdom.

But how can that actually be achieved? Outside of a few media giants whose businesses are strong enough that writers needn’t care about petty details like readership or pageviews, increasing one’s positive coverage of China presents a problem: nobody wants to read those stories.

I cannot be sure why this is the case, and it may be partially the media’s fault. Certainly, people tend to prefer consuming information that reinforces their own preconceived notions, so if the media has presented a negative picture of China, then over time readers may have come to prefer that sort of coverage. Personally, I think it’s simpler than that: to most people, positive news coverage is boring. The heart of an interesting story is conflict, and compelling conflict can be difficult to find in the kind of positive, context-giving news that’s important to really understanding what life is like in China.

Whatever the reason, though, there’s no doubting the reality. I work for a data-driven startup and I’m passionate about remaining employed, so I’ve been keeping a close eye on my readership numbers for years. Negative news (like news about internet censorship) virtually always does well. Positive news does well only if it’s accompanied by some stunning number or has some other especially surprising element (like a story about a huge funding round or China’s latest internet user count). Most of the positive, this-is-important-context sorts of stories that I write fall very flat in terms of viewership numbers. (I keep writing them anyway, but my long tail of low-view posts comes up every time I’m speaking with another editor about my numbers).

And of course, I work in startup/tech news, a particularly positive-news-friendly subgenre of business news, whose readers probably tend to be more welcoming of good news because they’re invested in the sector. For more broad-ranging reporters, finding positive, contextually important news stories about China that Americans are actually willing to read is probably a challenge.

If the standard of living increases in China, for example, there’s no real reason for the average American to care, and a headline about that doesn’t promise any surprising revelations or compelling conflict. It’s important to understanding modern China, yes, but how can you get John Q. Public to click? And if you can’t get him to click, how can you justify spending much time covering the story?

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? If a Western media outlet covers China evenly but its readers ignore half of the stories, has it made a difference?

The other approach, and probably the more viable one, is to try to squeeze as much of that context as you can into the high-drama-high-traffic “negative” China pieces. But that results in a lot of repetition, and risks sounding like this:

It also has the potential to alienate regular viewers, who by the fifth or sixth story are going to be sick of reading that China’s Communist Party lifted millions of people out of poverty through the gaigekaifang.

So yes: it would be better if Western coverage of China presented a more complete picture of life in the Middle Kingdom. But in the current media environment, I’m genuinely not sure how this can be effectively accomplished. Many reporters don’t have the luxury of writing stories that are likely to generate poor pageview numbers, and even those who can write whatever they want have no way of forcing conflict-hungry readers to actually read their positive coverage. Context is very important to understanding China, but John Q. Public doesn’t give a fuck about context. We all know what gets clicks, and it ain’t stories about the CCP helping rural farmers.

What’s the solution to that? I have no idea. (Elsewhere in his interview, Kaiser advocates direct contact, which is certainly an effective way of giving people a deeper understanding of China’s realities, but not one that foreign correspondents have much influence over.)

Separately, it’s good to see that even before moving back, Kaiser has got life as an ex-expat figured out:

“When I’ve been away from China for a while, my craving is inevitably for good Sichuan food: I make a bee-line for one of my favorite Sichuan eateries and order laziji and shuizhuyu and all that good stuff.”

Aaand now I’m hungry. Time to go check the price of China flights.