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

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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Jammed news competes for Chinese ears
Libby Liu
President, Radio Free Asia
We are funded by the US Congress through a grant from the Broadcasting Board of
Governors to do surrogate broadcasting, which means we try to behave as indigenous free
press in countries that have a closed press - Cambodia, Laos, Burma, North Korea,
Vietnam and China, where we broadcast in Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan and Uighur.
We do exactly what these regimes hate the most, which is to try to get local and national
news to the people that it is happening to. Oftentimes, I have representatives from the
Chinese government say to me, “You should do more good news. Our economy is so great
and there are so many uplifting pieces.” I say, “Listen, we don't choose our news. You
choose our news. Our job is to put on the news that the central news will not put on.”
And in the cases where they do put on what we would say are confusing accounts, we will
try to correct the record by giving contrary witness reports. We are also trying to fill a void
by providing a platform for the open discussion of forbidden issues and topics. And you
know, it cannot be expressed more strongly how people feel, when they cannot talk about
their deepest thoughts on freedom, when they turn on the radio and, as if by a miracle,
they hear somebody on the other side of the country say exactly what they think and feel.
This is an incredible thing we are able to do and accomplish. Understand that we are
journalists not activists. So we provide facts, reports, witness statements, and we rely on
our audiences to form their own opinion.
For 11 years, Radio Free Asia has been doing this in China. We have created a wide
network of brave sources. They take enormous risks to come to us and tell us about what
is going on in China. But the thing they know after 11 years is that if they have a breaking
story on human rights or press freedom, civil unrest, land seizures or corruption, Radio
Free Asia will be there for them. We will investigate their story. We will find independent
confirmation, and we will report the issues. Our job is to shed light on the concerns of
everyday people so that they can be examined.
We work extensively with citizen journalists. We love the work of Boxun, which often picks
up our reports and republishes our broadcasts or news. We have a unique role. We must
be vigilant about our journalistic ethics. In other words, if we can't confirm a story we hold
it. And believe me we hold so many stories we would love to break that we honestly
believe are true. Although we can get real-time images, we need the context because
without the context of accurate reporting, images are subject to manipulation. And that is
something we are always concerned about. Believe me, if we make a mistake the Chinese
government will be all over us.
One of the advantages that Radio Free Asia has is that we work in multiple languages. So
for example, we recently did a story about a demonstration in Xinjiang of women