Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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Olympic Games Executive Director, Gilbert Felli, gave the Committee to Protect Journalists
in Lausanne in November 2006, and the line has barely changed since.
Nor is this a situation in which China can claim that it is being forced to accept Western
standards of governance through some sort of unwarranted interference in its internal
affairs. After competing with four other cities in 2001, it entered into a contractual
agreement with the International Olympic Committee to host the Games. One of the
promises it made was that it would fix its media problem. When skepticism arose back
then, both sides assured the world that by 2008, China would have moved on from its
increasingly archaic censorship policies.
Unfortunately, after seven years of avoidance and delay, we now must hope that things
will get better in the short period before the start of the Games. Otherwise, the 25,000 to
30,000 visiting journalists can expect some challenges when they cover the Games and
particularly when they cover the China that lies beyond the Games’ venues.
Resident foreign correspondents already assume their phones are tapped and their e-mail
scanned, particularly if they are the sort of reporter who digs deeper into controversial
issues. They also know they are running the risk of a confrontation if they look too closely
at issues like the military or Taiwanese independence, pro-democracy activists, HIV/AIDS
villages, the Falun Gong, or underground churches that meet without the government’s
permission. The pressure has already started and will increase on groups that might try to
pull off a demonstration to catch the attention of foreign cameras in Beijing.
But, more importantly, newcomers to reporting in China should realize that their Chinese
counterparts are not allowed to play by the same rules. And that particularly applies to the
thousands of young production assistants, translators, gofers and fixers they will be hiring
to help them once they start to spread out across the country.
Experienced Chinese journalists know the limits of their freedom. The Committee to
Protect Journalists has not spoken to any of them who say they plan on breaking new
reporting ground while the Games are on - though some have wistfully said they wished
the sort of relaxation of rules for foreigners would be extended to them.
It is the younger college students and recent graduates, with the language skills and
enthusiasm to catch the eye of a foreign correspondent, who will be more at risk. We are
concerned that when foreign news teams arriving in Beijing hire local Chinese assistants,
they will place demands on them that might put them in jeopardy.
Reporters who ask their Chinese hires to arrange potentially dangerous meetings, say with
activists, or to visit an HIV/AIDS village, or get advance information on potential
demonstrations that the government will want to quash, might be putting their Chinese
colleagues at risk. It is not inconceivable that they will be made to pay a price, if not
during the Games, then afterwards, when the world’s attention has moved on.
Clearly, these are not the open Games the world has become accustomed to, or the
Games we were promised in 2001. After the revelations of corruption involved in Salt Lake