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Doomsayers, Pollyannas both blinded to reality
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About 10 years ago, one of my American professors told me in a half-humorous tone that the biggest problem with American news was that the only news fit to print was bad news.
I replied that it was the opposite in China in the 1960s and 1970s, where only good news — sometimes boastful — was fit to print.
In practice, neither gives a balanced view of the world.
If we paint everything bright, we lose sight of our dark moments.
If we paint everything dark, we lose sight of our shining spirits.
Both cause public resentment and prevent society from having enlightened debates.
I’m not sure whether American journalism has learned its lesson of erring on the darker side, but it’s certain that journalism in China today, especially that which depends on commercial ads to survive, has increasingly focused on bad news as if it describes and defines what we are as Chinese.
Take good samaritans for example. If you browse the three Chinese characters fu lao ren (help a fallen elder up), you will find most news stories and headlines in Chinese media are about good samaritans who face blackmail by those they help. In other words, most reports are negative.
Some of my colleagues are so influenced by these negative reports that they often pound our lunch table in great anger and distress, lamenting so-called moral decay in China.
But life is never black or white. Good samaritans are everywhere in our daily life. In buses or subways, many people, including myself, habitually give seats to the elderly, pregnant women and children. Although I haven’t seen people helping a fallen elder with my own eyes, I’ve seen quite a few passengers helping fragile elders getting on and off buses.
Tendency to mislead
These positive actions, which happen every day around us, seldom find their way into media reports. Is it because today’s media — heavily commercialized in particular — has more interest in the exceptional than in the normal? Very likely.
News media has a tendency to mislead. If a few, similar scandals are repeated time and again in the media, many people will think our entire society is scandalous in certain aspects.
Whenever I get a phone call from my father, he cautions me: “Don’t go out, Shanghai is unsafe these days. I just read a news story saying that someone had killed someone in Shanghai.”
Last month I was out of office for a week on official business. In that week, I enjoyed my lunch every day without the angry complaints of my colleagues. Guess what happened when I returned to lunch at the office canteen?
One colleague, similarly overwhelmed by our gloomy companions, cried for my help: “I could no longer survive their endless complaints, I had quit lunching with them while you were away!”
As a journalist, I know the importance of exposing problems, but over-stretched complaints can blind us from seeing the forest and seeking the best solutions.
Focusing on bad news also harms cross-culture understanding.
If you ask an ordinary Westerner about his or her image of China, you are likely to hear that China is growing fast but China is a threat to democracy.
A healthy dose of suspicion and criticism is fine, but too much of it does no good to understanding.
The name of this weekly column comes from the famous Taoist saying that the ultimate good is the way of water.
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