Talkin' back to The Man

An article from Interfax tells of a Southern Metropolitan Daily opinion piece that was written in response to the Ministry of Health Mao Qun'an's comments to the effect that the media was covering medical and health issues irresponsibly by creating reports that are unbalanced and unobjective. Well, the folks at Southern took issue to that, but of course, replying to accusations from an official is not for the squeamish, so they worded their reply quite cautiously:

In what could be seen as a pre-emptive move to escape government censure, the carefully-worded commentary was quick to concede ground in the debate, acknowledging certain aspects of Mao's remarks. It stated that his words served as a reminder that problems in the health care sector needed to be reported with care. It also acknowledged the existence of unbalanced reporting on health issues in some parts of the media.

But the paper claimed that medical reform was a major concern and something which affected everyone and that a newspaper did not create news, it reported it and was a 'platform to publicize information', and had its own professional ethics to uphold.

The newspaper pointed the finger of blame squarely in the direction of health management and said the uncooperative attitude of many medical establishments towards the media did not help them report matters more clearly.

Shanghaiist found the Chinese original here (in Chinese, duh) and read through it, comparing it with the snippets of translation that the Interfax article offered. They were mostly correct, but we would like to add something: There is one paragraph where they talk not just about the state of health journalism in China, but the role of the media in general:

医患之间的专业壁垒，使得医患纠纷中的患者成为不折不扣的弱势一方，其与医方的交涉能力相当受限。又由于在医患矛盾处理中，缺乏具有普遍公信力的仲裁机构与处理程序，患者所能依靠的，只能是私力救济。而诉诸媒体，正是弱势患者可以借力于社会以完成博弈的主要方式。因此，他们面对媒体，有强烈的诉求，有主动的作为，有充分的沟通。

This paragraph basically states that patients are at an inherent disadvantage vis-a-vis the medical institutions and health adminstrations. Without publicly trusted mediators to adjudicate conflict, the patients do the only thing they can think of: go to the media, get their stories out there. The writer seems to concur with this vision of the media as means of evening out the odds between the weaker and the stronger.

We also liked this paragraph:

而以此要求媒体停止“丑化医疗机构”，或许只能令媒体对于医患纠纷这一社会热点干脆视而不见、轻描淡写。而这，即便是行政权力可以达致的效果，又岂非媒体行业价值的沦丧？

This paragraph states that "as far as the directive to stop villifying medical insitutions goes, they (the government) can perhaps make the media overlook these disputes or else short-shrift them in coverage. And this, even were it possible by administrative means (i.e. government fiat), would it not entail the devaluation of the media as an institution?" We are translating a bit liberally here, but hopefully we've preserved the gist. These guys at Southern, you got to hand it to them, they got balls. To those rare few in this country who have the courage to uphold the rights of journalists and the media to do their jobs, someone at Shanghaiist salutes you.