🇨🇳 The story of China's Southern Media Group | The Listening Post (Feature)

Nearly 25 years ago, it was a charmed time for news reporters and consumers in China.

"A prime example of that golden age was the Southern Media Group," according to Maria Repnikova, assistant professor at Georgia State University.

"This particular media group has done really well in attracting wide readership, attracting advertising revenues, and becoming one of the prime examples of high-quality reporting that is also capable of making money in China."

But China's golden age of journalism was not to last. As the country approached a political milestone, the 2012 transition from President Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, the censors aggressively swung back into action.

For the Southern Weekly, New Year's Day 2013 marked an unprecedented moment in China's media history. That year, in its New Year's editorial, the paper called on the country's leaders to adhere to the principles in China's constitution.

As it went to print, however, the editorial was pulled by state censors and replaced with a version that praised the Communist Party and its newly anointed leader.

Journalists at the Weekly staged a walkout, the first of its kind in Communist China. Hundreds of ordinary citizens would later join the protests in solidarity against the censors.

Fang Kecheng, a former political reporter with Southern Weekly, was in the newsroom that day.

"The censors really stepped over the line ... Foreign media covered this incident and it really showed that this newspaper, because of its reputation during last more than 20 years, it got a lot of supporters in the society - both on social media and offline," recalls Feng.

Through 2013 and after, the censorship of the Southern Media Group was taken to another level. Reporters were harassed, online content was ordered to be taken down, and publishing licences were revoked.

The end of 2015 marked a low point: senior editor and former chairman of multiple Southern Media Group publications, Shen Hao, was sentenced to four years in prison on what many observers said were trumped-up extortion charges.

Chang Ping, a deputy editor and news director at the Southern Media Group, was forced to leave China just before Xi's ascension to power. He has watched from the outside as the state's grip on media has tightened.

"Pressure is not necessarily always placed on individuals, but on the industry as a whole ... it's a systematic process to control the media," he says.

The Southern Media Group's case isn't an isolated one, it's just one of the most prominent.

Given the sheer number of voices in China's vast journalistic sphere, absolute government control has never been completely possible.

What is undeniable, however, is that under Xi Jinping, the Chinese state's command of the media space has been consolidated and reinforced, with dramatic repercussions for investigative work across the country.

Contributors

Maria Repnikova - Assistant professor, Georgia State University
Chang Ping - Former news director, Southern Weekly
Fang Kecheng - Former political reporter, Southern Weekly
Steve Tsang - Director, SOAS China Institute

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[infoworld]

I have read the famous Southern Weekly 南周 for several years. When you read the articles, you felt you were enlightened and the society should be much better like what it described. But later I found it was just a delusion, it kept giving you good dreams that couldn't be realized. And later some reporters in the same group were find guilty of blackmailing some companies then I stopped reading it. One more thing, the ex-editor in chief Chang Ping was really not qualified for his job, he approved the article which said the Sichuan earthquake was a punishment from Buddha to Chinese.

[galecarp]

True Story. I am glad to see this here.

[canman]

Make Cantonese the official spoken language of Southern China.

[svss]

CPC should be thrown out of the office ROC should be installed

[frankieleung]

Investigatory journalism in China?? Are you kidding??

[johnliu]

The story of Western's AI Jazeera English😂

[rayman]

has everyone realized, suddenly there r more negative china related reports on Al Jazeera compare to the past, think about the current economic and geopolitical tensions btw china and the u.s, en.... very interesting ....