In May 2012, Chinese authorities refused to renew the visa of Al Jazeera English’s Beijing correspondent Melissa Chan, forcing the news outlet to close down its operations in China (official reasons for the visa denial were not given last year, and remain unknown). Chan is now a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, where she is researching online tools to better guarantee the security of journalists and their sources.
A year after the former Beijing correspondent bid her farewell to China, she sat down with the University of British Columbia’s Asia Pacific Memo for an interview. The interview covers the relationship between and unique roles of China correspondents and China-focused academics; the policy impact of journalism and the need to guard against making direct connections between foreign coverage and changes in China’s state policy; China’s changing media landscape, and the differences between state-backed global news outlets like Al Jazeera English and Beijing’s own excursions into the international news media. From Asia Pacific Memo:
Also see prior CDT coverage of some of the topics mentioned by Melissa Chan: Bloomberg’s probe into the family wealth of Xi Jinping and the New York Times’ similar investigation into the family of then-prime minister Wen Jiabao; recent allegations that foreign media companies covering China have been the target of cyber-espionage; the tightening of media controls in the PRC; and CCTV America – Beijing’s entrance into the U.S. news media.
