BBC adopts language of Chinese propaganda

Now that's a title I never expected to use!

On 16 January, the BBC's online news service posted a report about media reaction in China to PEOTUS Donald Trump's suggestion that the One China policy is negotiable (China media:Trump 'playing with fire' on Taiwan). The BBC decided to call President Tsai Ing-wen 'Taiwanese leader' and 'Taiwan's leader', thus appropriating the labels attached to her by the government in Beijing.

Perhaps the BBC should realise that President Tsai was democratically elected by 56.12 percent of the vote on a 66.27 % turnout. The BBC publishes this report in the week that President Elect Trump is inaugurated even though he received 2.9 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Can we argue, therefore, that President Tsai's election is far more legitimate than Trump's? Is democracy more robust in Taiwan than the US?

I do not recall any BBC reports referring to any US President as the 'Leader of the US', and I doubt they will use this term to describe Mr Trump. Is it too much to ask the BBC to extend such courtesy to other democratically Presidents, including British-educated Tsai Ing-wen, and stop engaging in propaganda on behalf of the Chinese state?
    

What's in a name? Or why the BBC should stop referring to the 'so-called' Islamic State

In my last blog, The medium is not the message, I took issue with an argument in Jared Cohen's piece for Foreign Affairs (November/December 2015):

'... governments should consider working with the news media to aggressively publicize arrests that result from covert infiltration of the Islamic State's online network'.

The medium is not the message. In counterinsurgency the message - its design, its credibility and its reception - depends on the language used and the way the language conveys the themes decided by the source. It is possible to argue that before we begin to understand how to defeat modern terrorism, we need to appreciate the importance of discourses, narratives and language in determining how modern terrorism works, how terrorist groups define themselves and are defined by others; and therefore attention to discourses and language  must be central in any strategy designed to confront terrorism. This is particularly crucial when religion and ideology are invoked as justifications for terrorist activity. Success or failure can often depend on the use of a particular word or phrase.      

My response to Cohen was far from ambiguous: 'The day that governments in liberal-democracies work with the news media', I argued, 'is the day the terrorists have won, for it is a clear violation of the objective and independent journalism that should govern how news media work. It is the media's job to scrutinise governments, to hold them to account for their actions, not to "work with them", aggressively or otherwise'.

BBC journalists are routinely violating the very principles they, in other circumstances, justifiably cherish and have defended certainly since the General Strike of 1926, if not since the very foundation of the organisation in 1922. 

A disturbing trend has crept into BBC journalism over the past several months, and that is a predilection for calling the terrorist group the 'so-called Islamic State'. The use of the qualifier 'so-called' is mistaken, counter-productive, and politically very questionable. 

Like it or loathe it, the Islamic State calls itself Islamic State; that's its name. It is proper to question whether this terrorist organisation represents Islam, and we should confer upon Muslim communities across the world the power to decide whether or not IS’s claim to represent their religion is right and justified. Similarly, it is correct to judge whether IS really is a 'state' at all. It certainly does not demonstrate any of the attributes that we normally associate with states, and IS is not recognised by any sovereign state or the United Nations, so its claim to the term is indeed questionable. But these are discussions that should and must occur without journalists announcing in news bulletins their own verdicts.   

The most crucial reason why BBC journalists should refrain from employing the pronoun 'so-called' in their stories about IS is that its use entails a value judgement; and BBC journalists are not in the business of value judgements. 

In June 2015, a cross-Party group of MPs, backed by the Prime Minister, accused the BBC of legitimising IS by using its name in its reporting. The BBC resisted any change: The Director-General, Tony Hall, said that the broadcaster must remain 'impartial'. But the BBC decided that a qualifier was legitimate, and a spokesman said 'We ... use additional descriptions to help make it clear we are referring to the group as they refer to themselves, such as "so-called" Islamic State.'   

According to Webster’s dictionary, the first definition of 'so called' is 'popularly known or called by this term'. But its second meaning is more relevant in this case, namely 'inaccurately or questionably designated as such' which may give the impression that the speaker has formed a judgement about the veracity of the words that follow.  

By using the pronoun 'so-called', the BBC tacitly accepts the government's agenda and can be accused of engaging in anti-IS propaganda on the government’s behalf. The term undermines the credibility of a world-class news organisation, when maintaining the credibility of the BBC is absolutely essential to counter the narratives of terrorist organisations, as well as authoritarian states. It challenges the very operational values of the BBC and thereby the principles of journalism in a democratic society. ‘So-called’ may suggest to its critics that they are right to question the BBC’s independence, while damaging efforts by journalists throughout the authoritarian world to expand the distance between the news media and government.

Yes, the organisation's claim to be an, or even the, Islamic State should be contested and defied at every opportunity. This challenge should form part of the counter-narrative that will form a credible assault against IS's commanding propaganda strength. But BBC news bulletins are not the appropriate location from which to launch this assault. If a pronoun must be used, the BBC may try using 'the group known as the Islamic State,' or 'self-proclaimed/self-styled Islamic State'. These are more reasonable qualifiers that draw attention to doubts about the organisation's claim, highlight very clearly from where the name comes from (the organisation itself), and still challenge its legitimacy to that name without undermining the BBC’s journalistic integrity.   

BBC Interview with Xu Lin about Confucius Institutes

The BBC's Shanghai correspondent, John Sudworth, has interviewed Xu Lin, the head of Hanban which is the state ministry responsible for China's Confucius Institutes. An edited version of the interview can be viewed here Interview with Xu Lin.

This is an extraordinary interview on many levels, not least Ms Xu's response to questions about her blatant interference in an academic conference earlier this year. I wrote a post about this incident as one of several 'public diplomacy faux pas', accessible here When to say nothing.

What is most surprising in this interview is not what she said in defence of the Confucius Institutes. Like any government minister across the world, Ms Xu is required to provide an official response to critical questions. Rather, most alarming is her logic: John Sudworth has no right to ask questions about Taiwan because it is a Chinese issue and only the Chinese can address it. This was an entirely inappropriate answer to the question of why she had ripped promotional material about the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation from the programme of an academic conference. It makes no sense in the context of the interview and undermines the more positive tone of her answers to other questions. It also provides the framing for the interview and means that any review will focus on the more dramatic and confrontational portion of the interview, rather than the substance. John Sudworth's decision to post online Ms Xin's request for him to to edit out altogether the question about the conference in Portugal and his refusal to do so means that this and not the cultural diplomacy of the Confucius Institutes become the story. Thus Xu Lin revealed that the Chinese government has much to learn about how the media work, and any claims of communication professionalism among government officials are premature. The interview was yet another public diplomacy faux pas.    

Moreover, Ms Xu resorted to complaining she had not been given in advance any question about the conference in Portugal and therefore refused to answer. This was her chance to explain and, dare we say, even apologise for her violation of academic freedom earlier this year. Any critic seeking evidence of how Confucius Institutes are not simply agents of cultural diplomacy and language teaching will find it here: Xu Lin not only refused to answer difficult questions, she also politicised the Confucius Institutes and reinforced the idea that they are led by dogmatists.

Just as we are assured that China's government communications machinery is becoming more professional, more sensitive to the demands of the modern media age, Xu Lin's interview tells a different story. It does little to reassure viewers that Confucius Institutes are not required to pursue a political agenda decided in Beijing.  The interview is a crowning end to a year in which Chinese public diplomacy has taken one step forward and two steps back.

China's Gastrodiplomacy on BBC2

I am enjoying a new series on BBC 2 called Exploring China:A Culinary Adventure, presented by Ken Hom (from Hong Kong living in the US) and Ching-He Huang (from Taiwan living in the UK). Ken and Ching-He are travelling through China to experience the regional cuisines and to find out whether the economic transformation of the country has changed the dietry habits of the Chinese and their style of cooking. On the way, they discuss their own backgrounds and talk about rediscovering their Chinese roots.

Gastrodiplomacy is becoming a defined field of international communications and engagement in its own right, and my friend Paul Rockower has written a lot about this on his own blog (the links are on the left hand side of this page). Exploring China is not only a contribution to China's gastrodiplomacy, but also demonstrates Chinese soft power in action.

First, both presenters never tire of explaining how China has changed since they last visited (Ken Hom in the politically-turbulent year of 1989, but so far he has not mentioned that this was the year when the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred) and pointing out the new additions to the landscape as evidence of China's transformation. In each episode they also venture outside the cities to provide a nice juxtaposition of modern and traditional: Clearly the message is 'The more things change, the more they stay the same ... ' They have so far encountered no obstacles in their journey, no-one trying to prevent their filming or denying them access to anywhere, and their own cooking has been greeted with a unanimous 'hao che' - delicious.

So the programme is apolitical, which is not unexpected in a programme about food. The presenters' enthusiasm and excitement is infectious, while tempting viewers to not only eat Chinese cuisine, but to try cooking it at home (the BBC website where the recipies are published is advertised regularly during the programme). This is an aromatic, tasty, spicy, and above all good-natured portrait of China. The culinary diversity is a gateway into understanding the cultural and social diversity of modern China, which is welcome in an information and news environment which tends to over-concentrate on Beijing (for political news) and Shanghai (for economic stories). The Chinese government could not have asked for a better introduction to its country, especially when its own soft power strategy was designed as a reaction to the alleged demonization of China by the western media. Here the BBC, one of the most internationally powerful, influential and trusted media organisations, is helping China realise its own ambitions; and that is not meant as a criticism. It is a side-product, an unintended consequence of an excellent television programme. 
  
Moreover, the fact that both presenters are culturally Chinese, but that neither is from the PRC, adds an interesting dimension. We are not exactly seeing China through the eyes of outsiders, but both Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang are nevertheless sufficiently removed from China to see the country in a refreshing light that does challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions that so aggravate the Chinese . In other words, through Exploring China the country is accumulating an incredible amount of soft power capital without having to do anything except allow two chefs and their film crews wander around markets and into kitchens to cook. It is an authentic non-Chinese (and therefore a most credible) induction into China that is likely to match, if not surpass the efforts of the Confucius Institutes, CCTV 9 and CNC.  

The Accidental Public Diplomat and the BBC World Service

In the UK we measure age by three things: which Blue Peter presenters we remember; which was 'our' Dr Who; and with whom we awoke on the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show. Growing up in the 1970s, I listened first to Noel Edmonds, before Dave Lee-Travis took the helm (and I think this was the last time I listened to Radio 1).

Yesterday 'The Hairy Cornflake' as he was affectionately known at Radio 1 emerged as the latest Accidental Public Diplomat when the Burmese pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi said that Lee-Travis's show on the BBC World Service had made her 'world much more complete'. She said: 'I would listen to that quite happily because the listeners would write in and I had a chance to hear other people's words.' The democracy leader then noted that the World Service had enabled her to keep 'in touch with everything ... with culture, with art, with books, with music.'

This news was released on the day that the BBC Trust welcomed the British Foreign Secretary's announcement that an additional £2.2 million per year would be provided to the World Service over the next three years. This means Hindi, Somali and Arabic language services (the Arabic service was the first foreign language service of the BBC Empire Service) will be saved from the axe.

This extra funding means the World Service is now facing a reduction of its annual budget by £42 million by the end of March 2014, rather than £46 million. This means five language services - Albanian, Russian, Portuguese for Africa, Serbian and English for the Carribean - will close. Radio broadcasts in Mandarin, Russian, Turkish and Vietnamese will cease, switching to other platforms.

I have talked about the folly of this in previous bogs and will not rehearse those arguments again here. What is most worrying is that from 1 April 2014, the BBC will take over from the Foreign Office funding the World Service using licence fee revenue. What this means is that the World Service, the most credible and trusted instrument of British public diplomacy, will have to compete with all the other BBC channels and platforms for funding. A programme in Korean or Strictly Come Dancing? The BBC World Service or BBC 3? How do you compare apples and pears?

Dave Lee-Travis was understandably pleased that his programme had made such an impact: 'I think it's rather nice,' he said, 'and it came as a pleasant surprise to me, that a leader of a country in the world, especially one that's been very repressed, listened to my programme, to get a bit of jollity in her life.'    

Old Media, New Media

I was drawn to two articles in the Guardian today. The first is an excellent interview by Polly Toynbee with Aung San Suu Kyi (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/16/interview-aung-san-suu-kyi-polly-toynbee). Toynbee describes how Aung San 'has just learned of mutinies in army bases [in Burma] from the BBC World Service, a lifeline when information is so hard to come by. She is relieved the BBC's Burma service has been saved from British government cuts, "puzzled" at the decision to cut the Chinese service. After 70 years, the BBC's last Mandarin programmes for China have just been broadcast.'

Aung San Suu Kyi is not the only one who is 'puzzled' by this decision as China scholars and activists will testify. The British government claims that fewer Chinese are listening to the BBC and are preferring to access news and information from the internet. However, it is far too naive to base decisions that affect 1.4 billion people, many of whom live in poverty, are uneducated and reside in areas where internet access is difficult (not to mention the problem that users who are not technologically sophisticated face in breaching the 'Great Firewall') on such a questionable assumption. Besides, what happens when the Chinese decide to limit or completely stop access to the internet in areas or situations experiencing serious unrest? To whom will people turn for information and news if the BBC and VoA have ceased broadcasting in Mandarin?

One can begin to appreciate the force of the arguments proposed by Evgeny Morozov in his provocative book, The Net Delusion in which he suggests not only the folly of Net optimists who believe that the internet will liberate mankind, but also the way that governments, like Star Trek's Borg, adapt to new communications environments and technologies - assimilate them, if you will - for their own advantage.

This is demonstrated in another Guardian article which reports the activities of 'cyber activists' in Syria (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/15/syria-activists-protests-in-view). One activist who spreads news and information on social media 'receives regular death threats on his Facebook and Twitter accounts from what he believes are Syrian security agents'. After his sister was arrested, Syrian security posted a message on his wall: "You have until midnight tonight to announce your withdrawal from the Syrian revolution or we will get her." And yet the cyber-activists in Syria remain committed to the cause and to the importance of using the social media (incuding Youtube) to share information.

This leads me to a conclusion that is neither original nor surprising, but perhaps too simple for some governments in this age of austerity to understand: isn't there room and need for both old and new media? The new media represents a new-style of activism, mobilisation and method of P2P communication; but old broadcasting media are also required. The BBC Mandarin Service has built over decades a reputation among its audience for accuracy and credibility, and there is a clear relationship based on trust between broadcaster and audience (public diplomacy is all about relationships, after all). To abandon such relationships in the mistaken belief that they are antiquated and no longer required in order to save money is a mistake. Both the Foreign Office and USIA throughout their histories have believed they could turn language services on and off like a tap, only to find that when they are needed again, it is not that easy to rebuild audiences and reputations.

Perhaps when Aung San Suu Kyi speaks on such issues, the British and American governments would do well to listen.          

The Summaries of World Broadcasts: A Unique Archive

I am so happy I found this article that I published in History Today magazine in 1993. I had been using the Summaries of World Broadcasts, housed at the BBC Written Archive Centre, for my PhD research and discovered they are a wonderful source of information and insight for the contemporary historian. Given the importance of understanding the role of all source analysis in the construction of modern foreign policy, including public diplomacy, the SWBs continue to have significant relevance.

A unique archive

by Gary Rawnsley

As historians we are taught that secondary sources are useful for our research, but on their own are not enough, and so we must turn to first-hand accounts and primary sources to provide the substance of our investigations. For most this involves frequent visits to the Public Records Office at Kew, and this is usually considered sufficient. However there are other less well-known archives which few consult, but which can effectively complement the PRO. One example is the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham Park, near Reading. Contrary to popular academic belief this is of use not only to scholars of the BBC but to anyone engaged in researching the post-second World War period of international history, since the Written Archives Centre is the home of the Summaries of World Broadcasts (SWBs), a rich depository of historical information.

The SWBs are a daily digest of foreign radio broadcasts (in the age of satellite, television is now also included) as received and collated by the nearby BBC Monitoring Service. They are divided into four parts to cover the principal geographical areas of the world, and each is supplemented weekly by a detailed economic report. They are then sold to 'customers', ranging from government departments and university libraries to interested companies and individuals.

Despite being established at the beginning of the Second World War, the BBC Monitoring Service came of age during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91. Recognised as the single comprehensive source of news and intelligence on what was happening inside Iraq, it finally achieved the worldwide fame it has long deserved. As a result, scholars of both the history of that crisis, and the role of the media in it, are beginning to use the SWBs to supplement and augment their analyses. One notable example is Philip M. Taylor in War and the Media (Manchester University Press, 1992). Taylor represents a new generation of political and diplomatic historians who accept that communication has assumed a dominant role in the conduct of international relations and thus interprets the events that have shaped global history over the past fifty years from a new perspective and understanding.

The value of the SWBs is heightened by the fact that they provide the government and the Foreign Office with a regular flow of information, particularly when traditional channels have been severed. This does not, of course, negate the important work conducted by diplomatic personnel stationed overseas which the Monitoring Service complements. In crisis situations, however, diplomatic relations are often cut off and legations are closed. In such circumstances the Monitoring Service can be the only source of news and information which is derived from both international broadcasting stations (often transmitted in the knowledge that they will be monitored and reported) and domestic transmissions (providing more substantial information and less propaganda, since they are intended to be received by the home audience only).

In 1993 historians have turned their focus towards the events of thirty years ago as revealed by the newly-opened government records at Kew. Research now underway will no doubt spawn many excellent historical studies of, for example, the event that dominated 1962 -- the Cuban Missile Crisis -- which will disclose much of interest that has never before been known. But the crisis also provides excellent opportunity to demonstrate how the official record can be supplemented by the picture of events as treated by the media of the time. Indeed, the Missile Crisis is a dramatic testament to the diplomatic importance attached to both international radio communication and the Monitoring Service.

At the height of the crisis, Khrushchev sent two messages to President Kennedy offering a resolution. The first, ignored by Kennedy, was sent via traditional channels and thus experienced a long delay in its transmission from the US embassy in Moscow. The SWBs show how Khrushchev surmounted this problem by relaying his second message over Radio Moscow, guaranteeing that American demands would be complied with. He did this, fully aware that at such a critical moment when time was precious, this message would be monitored and reported long before official diplomatic communiques reached the White House. Kennedy replied using the same method and for the same reason. In this way international broadcasting had undertaken a significant role, in defusing the most threat to the Cold War status quo.

What is most interesting, however, is that through a detailed reading of the monitoring reports for the period, historians can trace the events of the crisis from a new angle. What Radio Moscow had to say about American allegations of Russian missiles in Cuba, for example, reveals the lengths to which the Soviet Union was prepared to go to deny their presence. Often more significant is what was not said, and what this indicated in terms of a Soviet political response. Then, when Moscow finally acknowledged the presence of the missiles in Cuba, the SWBs suggest how they would be justified.

Most frightening, of course, are the threats of nuclear confrontation that litter the broadcasts. Notwithstanding the problem of ascertaining the credibility of such threats, a young researcher examining the events from a post-Cold War vantage point can understand just how close the world came to witnessing nuclear confrontation. The crisis can then be examined in its international context. At a time when Sino-Soviet relations were beginning to deteriorate, how did China respond to the Cuban Missile Crisis? And how did Cuba itself react to being used as a mere pawn in a superpower game of global chess? The SWBs show how Khrushchev was hailed as a hero by some, a reckless adventurer by others, and a capitulator by Castro. Moreover, how aware were the rest of the world of just how close the superpowers came to unleashing nuclear war? How did the media reflect this concern? Analysing the SWBs goes some way towards providing answers to these and similar questions.

Unlike government documents housed in overseas archives the SWBs are written in the English language, which can be useful to the researcher. However, critics may be concerned as to the accuracy of the translations and the fact that, as many languages are so precise, with the very tone of a spoken phrase having its own unique nuance, such translations are not reliable. There is no doubt that the monitors who work at Caversham, and the compilers of the SWBs, are aware of this potential problem but are skilful enough to cope; many of the monitors are, after all, working in their first language.

Historical research, however, does not have to be confined to the events of thirty years ago. Through the SWBs we can begin to piece together the jigsaw of the momentous changes that have occurred in Eastern Europe; broadcasts received at Caversham signalled both the downfall of the Ceausescu regime in Romania and the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in the autumn of 1991. For the latter a reading of the SWBs provides not only a detailed chronological account of the coup itself, but also confirmation that it was destined to fail. This is suggested by the way the format of broadcasts from Radio Moscow changed over the period. For example, while the first twelve hours of the coup were inevitably occupied by decrees and statements issued by the so-called State Emergency Committee, and sombre material music evoking memories of the succession of deaths of Soviet leaders in the early 1980s, in the evening the news reader allowed herself to lapse from the usual strict and formal style adopted by presenters to announce at such a critical juncture in the nation's history: 'And that is the end of the news from the World Service of Radio Moscow on this beautiful summer's evening.' By the second day, reports had restored a level of balance, including coverage of the resistance by ordinary Russians to the coup, the actions and statements of Boris Yeltsin, and condemnation of the events by John Major and George Bush. This is most significant when one recalls that the media had theoretically been placed under the control of an 'especially created central body'.

The BBC Monitoring Service is currently collating volumes of invaluable information concerning the ongoing conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Moreover the fragmentary evidence made available by the SWBs as a series, allows the end of the Cold War and the shaping of the New World Order to be surveyed and, in turn, suggests where our political focus may shift in the near future. The basis for this speculation would not be simply prediction, but an academic interpretation and analysis of the world's media; they are the first to report events and situations, often without knowledge of their import or significance. The historians of the future will no doubt benefit from the progress made today towards such ends.

It is time then that more historians began to delve into this unique source of information. It is no less valuable than more traditional sources, and offers exciting new research possibilities. In isolation the Summaries of World Broadcasts present an opportunity to study individual situations from the viewpoints of the main participants and a chance to see how the media reflects the political responses to world events. Together the Summaries are an indication of the growing importance attached to the media in the political life of the planet.