Impact of the GLOBAL MEDIA REVOLUTION

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1999 by Steve Bell

"A growing body of evidence is documenting how a worldwide flow of images and information is affecting nations, their policies, and their relations with one another."

When Pres. Clinton traveled to China in July, 1998, two media events dominated the headlines. They symbolized the degree to which the worldwide media revolution is impacting substantive decisions of policy and diplomacy for governments as disparate as those in Washington and Beijing.

The lasting images of the state visit were not of a policy pronouncement or even of Clinton's much-criticized visit to Tienanmen Square. On the contrary, what viewers remember most were a joint news conference with China's Pres. Jaing Zemin that turned into a debate on human rights and Clinton's spirited question-and-answer session with students at Beijing University. Both events became the focus of media attention only after it was announced at the last minute that they would be broadcast live, giving the Chinese people unprecedented exposure to criticism of their government's policies.

Despite their limitations, the broadcasts are a timely reminder of the degree to which media images have become both a tool and a potential threat. To update philosopher Marshall McLuhan, the medium (in a growing variety of electronic media) is becoming far more than the message, and it is imperative to identify and assess the consequences. Consider the impact of the media on U.S.-China relations.

In 1972, the media images generated in one week by Pres. Richard Nixon's visit to China almost totally reversed the American public's negative, even frightening, Cold War stereotypes of China and its people. Then, in 1989, the public perceptions swung dramatically toward the negative again, with shocking images of the Chinese military using tanks and troops against youthful demonstrators in Tienanmen Square.

The historic, high-profile Nixon visit was an early example of a planned media event, although even world statesmen like Secretary of State Henry Kissinger might not have anticipated its extraordinary impact on public opinion. Tienanmen, on the other hand, was a happening. The international press corps had been invited to China to cover a visit by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It stayed to focus world attention and outrage on images symbolized by a lone protestor standing up against a tank. Suffice it to say, those images still haunt China in its quest for respect and status in many arenas, especially the U.S. Congress.

In that context comes the Clinton visit, with its own deliberate imagery. Certainly, the impact on the worldview of China does not compare with 1972 or 1989. Nevertheless, the trip, and the coverage, are useful reminders of the expanded role of the media as an instrument of policy. More important, the Clinton broadcasts offer a unique opportunity to consider the other side of the media equation: its impact on the kind of society that always has depended on social and political thought control as an essential adjunct to governing.

The live broadcasts of the Clinton events in Beijing were obvious attempts to use media images for political purposes in the U.S. As Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland wrote prior to the trip, the Clinton Administration's main goal was to change American perceptions and politics and get the public to accept "the anodyne, uncritical view of China" reflected by many business leaders and academics.

News coverage of the Clinton trip, prior to the surprise broadcasts, largely was negative, with criticism of China's human rights record and suggestions that the Administration had jeopardized American security with high-technology sales to China that might be tied to illegal campaign contributions. Thus, it was in the interests of both governments to provide a new "spin," and that is just what the broadcasts did. The tone of U.S. reports from Beijing changed perceptibly, with Clinton getting credit for sending "the right message" to a Chinese leadership that at least was listening.

Jan Barris, vice president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, thinks China's leaders approved the live broadcasts because they knew they had to give Clinton "something big," and they wanted to show Americans they are becoming a "more open society." Nicholas Platt, president of the Asia Society, credits coverage of the live broadcasts with "defusing the political issue" in China's rapprochement with the U.S.

Polls showed no significant swing in American public opinion toward China following the Clinton visit. After all, coverage of the trip hardly had been of the blockbuster variety. On Capitol Hill, though, the House soon voted to approve continued special trade status for China, with less dissent than usual, and Platt says the perceptions created by the live broadcasts in China made it easier for members of Congress, especially Republicans, to support the trade bill.

Even if the Chinese leadership accomplished a diplomatic goal in giving Clinton his live audience in China, at what price might it come in terms of domestic politics? In fact, the People's Republic of China has taken a path that makes a unique case study in how the world media revolution impacts a non-democratic, sometimes repressive government that seeks to have it both ways. China wants to retain domestic political control, even as it wants to take part in the world's free-market economy. The question is: Can you maintain the information control necessary for authoritarian rule when a free-market economy demands that more and more people have access to more and more outside information and communications?