Jan 20 2009
How to Silence a Journalist
Just read the outrageous news, “Leading Russian Rights Lawyer Is Shot to Death in Moscow”. The title says it all. What is striking is the nonchalant tone in the piece, as if being murdered in broad daylight is part of daily life for Russian liberals.
True or not, just got me thinking. A new term coined in China last year was “beggar-gang journalist” (新闻丐帮). It refers to journalists flocking to industrial accident sites, waiting to be bought off. For example, there have been reports that some coalmine accidents were left out of news after reporters were seen getting paid off.
Each of the two above story may not be so interesting until they are placed side by side. It reveals something about each society, particularly what happens when ”civilized” disagreements cannot be reconciled.
If I read Norbert Elias right, historically, conflict resolution used to be violent. A side project of the modernization/state formation/social transformation is the “civilization” process after which physical violence is replaced with “war of words and symbols” (my phrase). Well, the journalists are perhaps the ultimate word warriors in this regard.
But sooner or later, the words will run afoul of the real world somewhere. How the societal dissonance is reconciled really tells something about the society. Both China and Russia are top-down, patriarchal societies, yet how they hold themselves together seems to be different: one resorts more to man self-interest, the other to man’s fear.
Needless to say, this is not about who is more right/better than the other. Just interesting to note.