【华尔街日报博文】New China News Agency: Guardian of Media Ethics

Roadblock

New China News Agency: Guardian of Media Ethics
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2009/05/18/new-china-news-agency-guardian-of-media-ethics/

May 18, 2009, 6:48 AM ET

Ouch.

China’s Xinhua News Agency is lecturing Western media outlets for ignoring risks, covering up lies, protecting the powerful and clouding the truth.

The context: China’s state news agency says its newsgathering efforts will be an essential pillar in a reordered global financial landscape, since a “monopoly” of Western media shirked their duty to protect the system.

“I will underscore today that the information asymmetry and the non-objective, unfair and one-sided information order as another reason for the financial crisis,” Xinhua Vice President Lu Wei told bankers and policymakers gathered in Shanghai on Saturday (report in Chinese here).

In his spirited presentation, Mr. Lu echoed other conference delegates that the global recession resulted from lax regulators and greedy financiers, and he also laid fresh charges: “Under a situation where news gathering was monopolized, communication power was controlled, risks were hidden, the truth covered-up, market information was disseminated to represent selected groups, falsities clouded investor judgment and brought finance to the abyss,” Mr. Lu said.

Now, in response, the state-run Chinese news agency says its role will be to help build Shanghai into a global financial center – itself a plank in Beijing’s response to the financial crisis. Xinhua last week in Shanghai kicked off construction of a headquarters building for its financial information platform, China Finance Corp., with a ceremony attended by government policymakers and the local managers of foreign banks like Citigroup Inc.

Xinhua’s efforts to speak on behalf of China’s financial industry also come as the government has embarked on a broader push to put a Beijing perspective on news events, a campaign said to be budgeted at $45 billion that includes launch new foreign language publications (see, for example, the English version of Global Times and the U.S. edition of China Daily) and broadcasting outlets.

To some, China’s goal is seen as necessary to disseminate opinions of the world’s largest population, and to others merely slicked-up Communist Party propaganda.

Xinhua is also aware that market news has often been a lucrative niche of the global financial industry. For years, Xinhua has battled over a piece of the action, most notably with the dominant providers: Thompson Reuters PLC, Bloomberg LP and News Corp.’s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Until months ago, when Xinhua agreed to pursue business only, it had claimed regulatory powers in China over the foreign outlets.

Already China’s premier media business, [url=http://202.84.17.11/en/index.htm%20and%20http://www.chinaview.cn/]Xinhua[/url] employs 13,000 in 100 nations and publishes in eight languages. It owns some of the most influential Chinese financial newspapers already, including China Securities Journal and Shanghai Securities Times. China’s State Council directly controls Xinhua, giving the agency a political standing a notch above other government media, namely China Central Television and China National Radio.

At last week’s conference organized to consider Shanghai as a financial center, polite rounds of applause went to speakers who called on the government to lower taxes, uncap executive salaries and otherwise adopt pro-market regulations.

But spirited cheers greeted Mr. Lu when he bellowed from the stage that Xinhua will be “the voice of China” as it embraces financial news for the good of the “country’s soft power and influence,” so as to “control the market risk through the financial information.”

On their feet, some shouted HAO! HAO! – Great! Great!

–James T. Areddy

j小蜜蜂