The process is now frighteningly familiar: First, ZDF Info announces a multi-part documentary on China. The production China vs. USA – clash of superpowers should trace the relations between the “economic powers on a collision course”. It is celebrated as a highlight on the station’s birthday, which advertises with the promise of “real added value”. But then the broadcaster deletes the production from its media library, like the first Tele-viewing reported. The repetitions in the linear program are also canceled.
Again, a broadcasting company has to delete a China production that is partly based on state propaganda material or was produced by state production companies. While the debate over the Communist Party’s influence on open societies is in full swing, those responsible on the broadcasters seem unable to repel the attacks, nor even to really see the problem.
Even worse. In a statement, the ZDF Info editorial team stated that it had not paid sufficient attention to the fact that the documentary series acquired under license came from a country in which “critical journalism only had a subordinate role”. Beijing couldn’t put it better: Journalists who deal independently with the country are defamed as not objectively, as “critical” and “anti-Chinese”. The most recent attacks against the German journalist Mathias Bölinger, who was threatened and persecuted while reporting on the floods in the city of Zhengzhou, showed just how dangerous the propaganda is.
Understanding China better is more important than ever. At the same time, the KP restricts access to information in a targeted manner: local journalists can no longer report independently. The number of correspondents is now lower than ever, and new visas are rarely issued. When doing research, they are hindered and threatened, interlocutors intimidated.
Instead of relying on propaganda material, editors should strengthen their own expertise in this situation. The CP tries to impose its point of view on the world. In the publicly financed broadcasting corporations it has had a shockingly great success.