While China’s athletes won glory in Paris at this year’s Olympics and Paralympics, there was widespread agreement on Chinese social media that the country’s reporters did not. Bloggers and athletes alike rolled their eyes at the inanity of the Chinese press corps’ questions to competitors. One particular flashpoint was a comment by Nanfang Daily’s Zhu Xiaolong, who questioned 17-year-old diving gold-medalist Quan Hongchan’s educational level and emotional maturity during a livestream. But the storm over Zhu’s comments was a microcosm of broader discussion about the news media, their role in China today, and their capacity to fulfill it. 

A series of translations this week shows some examples. The first post, from WeChat public account Wang Zuo Zhong You, slammed reporters for puffing themselves up with intellectual pretensions and chasing clicks with vapid fluff, rather than seriously focusing on the Games and athletes. This second installment, from “Human Swamp Excavator,” argues that Chinese authorities’ cultivation of tameness and docility in the media at home has left the country toothless against fiercer predators on the international scene. Despite its more nationalist tone and broadsides against foreign media, the post was removed from WeChat, though it remains online elsewhere.

This Olympic Games, the Chinese media offered their viewers back home a “collective dump” on the banks of the Seine

Interview question from foreign media: “Your team’s success has raised some questions [i.e., about doping].”

Interview questions from Chinese media: 

“Who’s your favorite celebrity? Whose concert would you like to see?”

“Do you know how to say ‘piece of cake’ in English? Shall I teach you?”

“People are always talking about how high you fly, how much you’ve achieved, but do you ever find it exhausting?” 

“Which of your teammates do you find most attractive? Rank them!”

“If you were an animal, which animal would you be?”

……

As a media worker, I find this endless barrage of stupid questions laughable.

At the women’s table tennis singles finals on August 3, China lost face with the “splendid sight” of fans of Sun Yingsha booing Sun’s Chinese teammate Chen Meng from the stands.

When the media tried to “set things straight,” they blamed it all on “fan culture.” Let’s leave aside the possibility of commercial intervention or “coordination” by leaders, and assume that fan culture really is entirely to blame. What I want to know is whether the media, while condemning the encroachment of fan culture on sports, ever reflect on their own words and deeds? Are fans really the only ones driving the “entertainmentization” of sports?

Official media flapping their mouths about athletes’ favorite celebrities and dream concerts—isn’t this encroachment of fan culture? Is this all the professionalism Chinese media can muster for interviews at a major international sporting event?

No professionalism at home; no firepower abroad

When conducting interviews at a sporting event, reporters should familiarize themselves with the professional experience and past achievements of the athletes they’re talking to, as well as their condition heading into the competition, current performance, challenges, and so on. They should also have a basic professional understanding of the sport, and some insight into the backgrounds of the other competitors. Adequate preparation is required if you hope to ask interview questions with any depth or value.

What the public wants is in-depth questions about how athletes have made breakthroughs, how they’ve prepared for the Olympics, how they maintain their competitive spirit, and how they stay positive and level-headed during the competition, not lightweight entertainment-style gossip or personal trivia.

This current crop of reporters have seen their rude and offensive tactics turned against them. And is it any wonder that the post-00s generation of rising stars would resent their unprofessional, even blatantly disrespectful, questions?

Reporter: Why won’t you answer any of my questions?
Quan Hongchan: You’re not asking me about diving. Ask about diving, and I’ll answer.
Reporter: But I don’t know anything about diving.

Reporter: What would you say to yourself, four years ago?
Quan Hongchan: Four? Don’t you mean three? (The Tokyo Olympics were delayed a year because of the pandemic.)

Reporter: Have you practiced on the three-meter springboard?
Quan Hongchan: I’m a platform diver, and you’re asking me about practicing on the three-meter springboard?!

There’s nothing wrong with asking a few personal questions to help make the athletes more relatable to the audience. But these personal questions should be there to grease the wheels of the more substantial, professional ones. If it’s all icing and no cake, of course the athletes are going to be scornful.

What an athlete who’s won a medal after struggling for three or four years in obscurity wants from an interview is to tell viewers how that struggle finally paid off, to provide technical insights into or impressions of their moment of triumph on the field. That’s the kind of content serious viewers want as well, but when the media focus on personal questions about athletes’ secrets, hobbies, etc., isn’t this itself directing viewers’ attention into the realm of fandom?

For another angle, take another look at the [Chinese] media’s performance in interviewing foreigners, where they’ve acquitted themselves even more poorly. At more than 2,400 people, our country had the single largest media contingent at these Olympics, but I didn’t hear a single one of them directly question American athletes about “purple yam faces,” a “transgender boxing champion [sic],” evading drug testing, or anything else. While foreign media confront us with provocations and rumors, we see none of the counterattack that we should from our own media, who just stick to the same playbook of “temperance, kindness, courtesy, restraint, and magnanimity” that they use at home.

Why not ask American coaches and athletes:

“Your swimming team all have purple yam faces—are they doping?”

“What new drugs are you taking to avoid detection in tests?”

“Why did you describe Pan Zhanle’s record-breaking performance as ‘not humanly possible’? Is it because you can’t match it, even with drugs?”

There’s no need for us to be polite when they’re not—throw their “offense” right back at them! Isn’t that what’s called “learning from foreigners in order to gain command of them”?

At a major international sporting event like the Olympics, there may appear to be only one battlefield—the athletic competition itself. But behind this lies the battle of rules, and the battle for public opinion, and it is on these battlefields that we must stake our claim and brandish our swords.

It’s not at all unfair to condemn the media for their reporting on these Games. Their domestic coverage was full of empty calories and entertainment-focused questions; their international coverage was toothless, so they couldn’t mount an effective defense of our country’s team members. It was a disappointment.

Strict government controls are breeding media mediocrities

By the time a problem becomes clear to the general public, it must already have been festering for some time. I think there are two main causes of our media problem:

First, domestic media (on the mainland) have been subject to government control for years. It would be more fitting to call them “internal propaganda outlets” than “media outlets.” Accustomed to singing the government’s praises and spreading positive energy, they have gradually lost sight of their role in keeping the government in check via “supervision by public opinion.” How many journalists are still doing undercover investigations nowadays? How many media outlets dare to demand accountability for social injustices? How many outlets are willing to follow up on tips from readers, or to speak out on behalf of the underprivileged? Not many, I’d say. Most of what we hear are praises; rarely do we hear cries of outrage. The media should be piercing and incisive: if they act like yes-men, then the villains of this world will rejoice.

If you get used to acting like a meek little kitten at home, you might forget to bare your claws and teeth when you encounter injustice elsewhere. A hedgehog with its spines plucked can’t jab people at home, but naturally it’s also rendered defenseless in the wild. Because they’ve fallen into this mindset and behavioral habit of not causing trouble, of not being too “prickly.” It’s also like the relationship between parent and child: if parents always demand submissiveness and obedience, you can hardly blame the child if, when he goes out into the world, he is too compliant with others.

Secondly, because of our “closed-off” internet, our external propaganda capacity is weak. This isn’t about the existence of the “Great Firewall” itself, but in my personal experience venturing outside it, I’ve found that the Chinese-language web beyond the wall is filled with the croaking of [Taiwanese] “frog media,” and I very rarely see a forceful presence from mainland media. What happened to the legendary task of “telling China’s stories well”? What ground do we hold on the battlefield of international public opinion? Instead of just adopting a defensive posture against brainwashing by international media, why not build up an ironclad legion of media outlets to strengthen our standing on that battlefield?

Just as political power requires a firm grasp on the “barrel of the gun,” so too should we wield our pens, and even more importantly, our megaphones. Recently, visa-free transit for foreigners has touched off a wave of “China fever.” Many people say this is a great strategy, and that there’s no need for us to raise our own voices—that these visitors will now advocate on our behalf. But what I want to say is that, as wonderful as this is, it still leaves the megaphone in others’ hands. If we don’t advocate for ourselves, will these people still be on our side when they get to the real international “arena”?

If the media doesn’t dare use prickly language, and doesn’t dare say what some might not like to hear, then over time, they get slack, and we’re left with the kind of mediocrities who can only ask brainless questions.

Telling China’s stories well requires sticks as well as carrots

I’ve always felt that China’s role on the global stage should be a giant, eloquently expressing its commitment to righteousness, not just a strong, colossal mute. We must guard the public opinion front as vigilantly as we guard our borders. The media should be our crack troops on that front.

We should tell China’s stories well to those who treat us well; but slap down those who recklessly insult and provoke us, and teach them to behave.

We can see from incidents like “stepping on rackets,” “deliberately bumping athletes,” or “ignoring friendly greetings” at these Olympics that not everyone abroad are people of good upbringing and character. We should deal with them politely at first, but if they fail to respond in kind, we should use public opinion weapons to teach them a lesson.

Verbal clashes with foreigners are fine, actually. There’s no need to always stick to harmony and pacifism. […]

The image of Chinese people as reserved and easily bullied needs to change.

Put some “spines” back on the mainland media, and stop telling them to just be “good little boys and girls.” Is it not embarrassing that the reputation of our thousands-strong mainland media outlets isn’t as good as that of a single Hong Kong satellite TV station?

The last thing I want to say is this: the problem with the media has never been just about the media. If a child grows up to be a mediocrity, it’s not just a reflection on the child. [Chinese]

Cindy Carter contributed to this post.