Jonathan Hassid's new book, China's Unruly Journalists, examines contemporary Chinese journalists and the courageous pushing-back practice of advocate journalism. He explores how some Chinese advocate journalists disobeyed the Chinese government and authorities and challenged their media control during a period when critical reporting and investigative journalism prevailed in China. Hassid is optimistic about the influence this type of journalism has in bringing about democratically friendly changes to China. He predicts that ultimately these advocate journalists can change China by publishing reports that contest certain policies. His book is drawn from extensive empirical data collected largely between 2006 and 2013, and Hassid combines both quantitative and qualitative data in his analysis.
The book sets out a typology of contemporary Chinese journalists in chapter two, identifying four professional types: “communist journalists, workaday journalists, American-style journalists and advocate professionals” (p. 8). This typology matches my understanding of contemporary Chinese journalism and the findings of other studies in this field. The next four chapters then detail the practices of these four types of journalists. Hassid especially welcomes the existence of advocate journalists who, he believes, can challenge powerholders. This leads him to discuss the evidence of pushback in chapters seven and eight and show how journalists struggle with the powerful over their reporting.
In chapter four, Hassid discusses the issue of corruption, which is a culturally rooted grey area in Chinese journalism. It is interesting to see that Hassid interprets “guard against fire, theft and journalists” as a slogan suggesting the existence of corruption in the media. In fact, this slogan can also be used to describe officials’ fear of formidable critical journalism and investigative journalism since the 1990s.
Hassid's attempt to combine qualitative and quantitative data in the research in chapter seven is welcome. In particular he uses computer-assisted content analysis, which is not a method that journalists or Chinese media scholars would normally use to detect the evidence of pushback. The extensive data he examines for this purpose can offer useful information that qualitative methods would not be able to provide.
In chapter nine, Hassid touches on the influence of online activism and participation on Chinese journalism and argues that online and offline activism should be seen as a whole. He is right that the internet should not be considered in isolation. Although the focus of the book is the newspaper industry, I would welcome more discussion of the impact of the internet on Chinese journalism, which became too obvious to ignore during the period covered.
In addition, I was curious to know why Hassid did not write more on the dramatic changes to politics, society and digital technology that China and its journalists experienced between 2006 and 2013. Since 2012, the state of Chinese journalism has changed in a way that demonstrates that the joint forces of the market, politics and digital technology can limit the critical ability of Chinese journalism. Hassid touches on the changes in political leadership in the book, especially in the conclusion chapter. He considers that the power of the market is short-term, and that what matters more is political power and journalistic professionalism. But if he had paid more attention to the contexts that influence how Chinese journalism operates, and the changes to Chinese journalism over time, he might have drawn different conclusions.
Hassid's discussions are based on the examination of journalism in a range of geographical locations such as Anhui, Chongqing and Fujian. Journalism in these places is under-examined since most other books focus on journalism in relatively liberal or metropolitan cities such as Guangzhou, Beijing or Shanghai. Hassid's book contributes nicely to our understanding of contemporary Chinese journalism during a particular period in which China witnessed a golden era of critical, investigative and advocacy journalism. However, the situation has changed and requires further academic attention.
