Contributions to scholarly literature come in many configurations: they may expand our base of empirical knowledge, apply innovative methodologies to explore questions in new ways, revisit what is known from new perspectives, or develop novel theoretical explanations. The aim of this book is to extend a well-known theoretical framework in media studies to a new context. Specifically, Hearns-Branaman sets out to apply the “propaganda model” developed by finance scholar Edward Herman in partnership with linguist Noam Chomsky to the workings of the news media in China today.
It's a curious mission, given that Herman and Chomsky's work arises from the context of mainstream corporate media in the United States and is most concerned with explaining the constrained spectrum of information and opinion produced by a system that ostensibly prides itself on a free, open and independent news media. To tremendously oversimplify, Herman and Chomsky are asking why the US media typically support US government policies, corporate interests and philosophies, and prevailing ideology even as the journalists and organizations producing the news purport to be autonomous actors. Why, in other words, does a media system that proclaims itself the very antithesis of propaganda so consistently produce, at least in its dominant outlets, what certainly looks like propaganda?
In China, by contrast, the media are unapologetically an arm of state and Communist Party power; even in this era of rampant commercialization and profit-seeking, Chinese media are still charged with propagating official orthodoxy. With propaganda a veritable pillar of the system, one would expect the news media to produce what looks like propaganda on behalf of the system. The fundamental conceit that Herman and Chomsky unmask – i.e. the very denial of propaganda in the US context – is absent from the Chinese context. Thus, the attempt to train Herman and Chomsky's lens on China turns into a kind of intellectual gymnastics act, involving considerable stretches and contortions and generating some overwrought results.
This is not to say that Hearns-Branaman is not onto something. The underlying prompt for his efforts seems to be the realization that China has gone capitalist, if not in name at least in conduct. From there it seems but a small leap to leverage a model designed to explain the political economy of news media in the heart of the capitalist beast. The problem is the model doesn't really fit.
Hearns-Branaman spends a chapter outlining what he sees as key differences and similarities between PRC news media and “Western” news media – a label that itself is problematic. First among the differences is the prosaic observation that China's media are in transition and constantly changing. This turns out to be the ultimate escape from commitment, since anything a scholar might say can be provisional. Second, Chinese media ownership is governmental rather than private – certainly an apt generalization, although the accompanying assertion that government regulation and control are rigid and pervasive needs far more qualification. Third, a sketchy and confusing section on journalists’ roles in China suggests that Chinese news workers are functionaries whose thinking and practices nonetheless are converging with those found in the West.
Hearns-Branaman is more emphatic in claiming similarities between Chinese and Western media systems, including the overriding influence of the market, support for the interests of business elites, the adoption of Western models in management style and approaches to news, and the increasing professionalization of Chinese journalists. And he implies that, in the realm of ideology, when it comes to extolling neoliberalism and the free market, China and the US are not really so different after all.
By this logic, the series of “filters” that Herman and Chomsky have enumerated as screening devices for news production in the US might be equally appropriate to the Chinese setting – with a few adaptations. Drawing on the original explication of the propaganda model in Herman and Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, first published in 1988, Hearns-Branaman offers the amendment for China of “manufacturing harmony.” Whereas the political and business elites in the US require a compliant media system to establish their legitimacy, he says, the Chinese elites are by definition legitimate and instead depend on media to instill social stability. In light of the vast amount of scholarship devoted to regime legitimacy in China, this seems a puzzling reformulation entailing some convenient circumlocution.
Successive chapters are devoted to the five filters Herman and Chomsky define as critical to US news production. In their original configuration, the pair argued that the preponderance of US news content is molded by: (a) ownership, (b) advertising, (c) reliance on official sources, (d) efforts to manage and spin the news through public relations and “flak,” and (e) anti-communism. In updates and interviews since the collapse of the Soviet and Eastern European bloc, they note that although anti-communism is still invoked when handy, the war on terror has supplanted it as a main theme, along with the enduring fealty to markets. Hearns-Branaman thus uses “dominant ideology” as the fifth filter.
Throughout, the chore of matching the Herman and Chomsky formula to Chinese circumstances continues to generate mental somersaults. Chinese media ownership may be governmental rather than corporate, but in this era the interests of business are congruent with those of the Party and state, and the influences of conglomeration, the pursuit of affluent audiences and the profit motive work similarly. Advertising is seen as an analogous pressure, as are elite sourcing and free-market ideology. These factors promote media development in the interests of a rising consumption-oriented middle class while disempowering the underprivileged. The fourth filter of special interest groups, meanwhile, is far less important in China since the government has a monopoly of influence. The author notes that Chinese media have maintained considerable insulation from transnational capital, an important point that he fails to work into the analysis.
The book offers no original research, drawing rather on existing scholarship on Chinese media from the 1950s into the new millennium, and explicitly avoids examining Chinese media content, purporting instead to be concerned with system and structure. The author is not terribly careful with timelines, often citing outdated work in support of claims about the present, but he has covered a commendable range of resources. The format and writing suffer from familiar thesis conventions, including repetitive introductions and recapitulations; presumably, although they are not specified, the book's origins lie in Hearns-Branaman's dissertation work – according to his vitae, he earned a PhD from the University of Leeds Institute of Communications, following an MA in international communication from the University of Nottingham and a BA in radio and TV from San Francisco State University.
To be frank, this venture resembles the struggles of Cinderella's stepsisters to jam their feet into the glass slipper. To be fair, the author shows a good command of an important model from communication studies and a genuine desire to understand who and what China's news media represent and where developments are heading. Unfortunately, the book provides neither a cogent account of Chinese media trends nor a convincing comparative analysis.
