Abstract
This chapter begins with a critique of the orthodox liberal perspective that is often used to examine news media in China. Against the background of news media commercialization, conglomeration and convergence in China, I draw on in-depth interviews with veteran journalists and senior editors to explicate how the political economy of Chinese news industry conditions the daily work experience as well as the professional identity of media workers. Moving beyond the conventional dichotomy of state censorship vs. repressed media, I try to provide a more complex picture by bringing into discussion the strategic positioning of media outlets themselves, the changing journalistic ethos and the new power dynamics of a converged media environment.
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Notes
- 1.
The interviews cited in this chapter were conducted during my fieldwork from December 16, 2016 to January 10, 2017. I assign a code to each interviewee based on the news outlet they work/have worked for and the sequence of the interview. For example SW02 here refers to the second person who works for Southern Weekly that I interviewed.
- 2.
SM stands for Southern Metropolis, a metropolitan newspaper under Nanfang Media Group.
- 3.
CBN refers to China Business Network , a Shanghai-based financial media group.
- 4.
CX refers to China’s flagship financial news magazine Caixin , which is under the editorial leadership of Hu Shuli.
- 5.
BN refers to Beijing News (新京报), one of the most successful metropolitan newspapers in China.
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Meng, B. (2018). Looking beyond the Liberal Lens: News Media as Contested Discursive Space. In: The Politics of Chinese Media. China in Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46214-5_3
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