Propaganda Officials Censor Coverage of Beijing Fire

March 12, 2009

Propaganda officials in Beijing ordered Chinese Web sites to delete blogs and discussion groups about a fire at a hotel under construction on the grounds of China Central Television's (CCTV) headquarters that began on the evening of February 9, 2009, according to a February 11 Los Angeles (LA) Times article. The officials also ordered Chinese media not to publish photos, videos, or in-depth reports about the fire, which took place in Beijing, and to run only official stories issued by the Xinhua News Agency instead of their own reports, the article said

Propaganda officials in Beijing ordered Chinese Web sites to delete blogs and discussion groups about a fire at a hotel under construction on the grounds of China Central Television's (CCTV) headquarters that began on the evening of February 9, 2009, according to a February 11 Los Angeles (LA) Times article. The officials also ordered Chinese media not to publish photos, videos, or in-depth reports about the fire, which took place in Beijing, and to run only official stories issued by the Xinhua News Agency instead of their own reports, the article said. Other foreign and Hong Kong media reported the existence of a propaganda order whose description closely matches the description in the LA Times article, including a February 11 Agence France-Presse (AFP) report (via Straits Times), a February 11 Times of London report, a February 10 New York Times (NYT) report, and a February 10 Apple Daily (Hong Kong) report (subscription required).

The fire, which reportedly began at 8:27 pm, quickly engulfed the 30-story hotel, and was allegedly caused by an illegal fireworks show arranged by CCTV employees for the last day of China's Lunar New Year holiday, according to a February 11 Xinhua article. The timing of the propaganda order is unclear. Apple Daily, citing the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, reported that at 11:15 pm on the night of the fire, the Network News Management Department of the Beijing Municipal Internet Propaganda Management Office under the Beijing Municipal Government issued the propaganda order. LA Times reported that by the next morning the "Beijing propaganda ministry" issued the order.

The impetus behind the order is also unclear, although a flood of comments on the Internet after the fire reflected public anger toward CCTV and may have prompted the order, according to AFP and LA Times. LA Times reported that the fire "laid bare simmering anger and resentment toward the network both for spending public money on grand construction projects and for continuing to broadcast government propaganda." The state-run CCTV is China's sole national television network and reaches more than a billion viewers, according to an August 21, 2008, NYT article. According to the network's Web site, CCTV serves as "an important mouthpiece for the Communist Party, government, and people."

Propaganda officials, led by the Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department (CPD), frequently issue orders to Chinese media intending to ensure that news coverage is consistent with the Party's political agenda. Prior to last year's Beijing Olympics, propaganda officials issued a number of orders to journalists, banning coverage of politically sensitive topics such as food safety issues and directing them on how to cover controversies arising before and during the Olympics. In December 2008, the CPD reportedly issued two orders instructing domestic news organizations to stop reporting on a CCTV reporter who had been arrested at her home in Beijing by officials from Shanxi province and to run only Xinhua versions of the story, according to a December 12 South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) article (subscription required). Propaganda officials often direct media to run only Xinhua stories following events deemed politically sensitive. Xinhua is an institution directly under the control of the State Council, China's central government, according to the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China's Web site. In January 2009, top Party officials said the propaganda agenda for 2009 would focus on safeguarding economic development and social stability.

Reporting by Xinhua and other official outlets appeared to dominate initial coverage of the fire although news outlets were observed later to publish their own photos and stories. State media did not report the fire until 10 pm, with Xinhua leading the way with just a one-sentence brief, according to a February 12 South China Morning Post article (subscription required). (According to Xinhua's Web site, at 10:07 pm the news agency issued a one-sentence story and at 10:14 pm published several photos.) According to the Beijing Youth Daily's Web site, the paper posted pictures and a brief story from the official Chinanews.com on February 9. Early on February 10, the paper published its own story that reported similar content as Xinhua reports printed elsewhere (see, e.g., February 10 Beijing Daily article), including the report that top Chinese officials, among them CPD Director Liu Yunshan, had rushed to the scene. On February 11, the paper issued a lengthier report including its own photos. The extent to which such reporting was consistent with the propaganda order reported here or other orders not known to the public is unclear. A previous Congressional Executive Commission on China analysis reported that in May 2008 many Chinese journalists ignored an order prohibiting them from traveling to Sichuan province to cover an earthquake.

The geographic scope of the order is also unclear. In Beijing, residents had difficulty finding images of the fire in the city's newspapers, on the Internet, or on television, according to the February 10 NYT article. Outside of Beijing, however, "photos and giant headlines about the fire were splashed across the front pages of newspapers throughout the country," according to a February 10 report on the Danwei Web site, which issues commentary on media, advertising, and urban life in China.

For more information on the Chinese government and Party's censorship of Chinese media, see Section II - Freedom of Expression, in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 2008 Annual Report.