On 24 March we had Simon Denyer, China Bureau Chief of The Washington Post. I introduced the speaker.
Simon was born in Portsmouth and studied Economics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He started his journalistic career with Reuters in London. Over the next eighteen years, he worked as a correspondent and bureau chief in New York, Nairobi, Islamabad, Kabul, New Delhi and Washington. He covered elections across Africa, Latin America and Asia, and wars from the Congo to Sudan.
He reported on Pakistan¹s battle against militancy and Afghanistan¹s faltering reconstruction in the two years after 9/11, before moving to India ahead of the 2004 elections that saw Manmohan Singh installed as prime minister. He covered the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, as well as the overthrow of the monarchy in Nepal and Bhutan¹s transition to democracy. After two years in Washington, he returned for a second spell in New Delhi as the Washington Post¹s India Bureau Chief. He is co-editor of Foreign Correspondent: Fifty Years of Reporting South Asia, an anthology of writing about the subcontinent.
He is the author of “Rogue Elephant: Harnessing the Power of India’s Unruly Democracy”, published by Bloomsbury in 2014 and just reissued as a paperback.
In 2013, he moved to Beijing.
He talked about the experience of working as a foreign journalist in China, and how Chinese journalists have been trying to adapt to the difficult environment. For me, only confirmation of what I already knew.
Alan thanked the speaker and all were impressed with Simon’s eloquence.
Indeed, being a journalist in China is a tough job. The government seems to be allergic to them and they face harassment, restrictions, are being detained and followed constantly. Free reporting, even when visits are “promoted” are impossible. People are afraid to talk to journalists and for a good reason. So, not a nice picture and certainly not good PR for China. The officials do not understand that pissing off (is there a nicer word?) journalists has the end result to make them angry and making them file negative stories about the country. And we all know that there is a lot of bad material to write about… No wonder thus that most of the foreign media paint a not-so-rosy picture of the government here.
As for the Chinese journalist, my take is, it is worse. Many journalists do not engage in real reporting, instead they often only file (good) stories when paid, or file bad stories if NOT paid or if the government likes it (e.g. criticizing foreign companies). And self-censorship is very strong as the real censorship is a complete killer of authenticity. If one has doubts about journalists in the West, here it is worse. Not to be surprised many end up in prison, either because they filed or TRUE story or because they blackmailed people or companies. For the few who dare to do a good job, consequences are not pretty.
