China will require its 250K journalists to pass Marxism test
Dec 23, 2013 7:19:02 GMT -5
Post by popcorn on Dec 23, 2013 7:19:02 GMT -5
China will require its 250,000 journalists to pass a ‘Marxism test’
Journalists across China are now boning up on Marxist terminology like the “labor theory of value” and “commodity fetishism.”
The United States “is bent on undermining China” — that’s a “fact”they’re committing to memory.
Their jobs depend on it.
Thanks to a new regulation promulgated last fall, all 250,000 of China’s journalists and editors will have to pass an exam on the “Marxist view of journalism” in January or February of 2014. In the several months leading up to the exam, the government has mandated that reporters take weekly classes to ensure “political consistency” with the Communist Party line.
Some reporters who lack ethics still have not surfaced,” one Marxist educator told the state-run Global Times. “We urgently need to educate media circles with the Marxist view of journalism. Such education can’t be loosened and should be conducted in a long term.”
Other exam topics are said to include:
• education in “the leading role of the Party in publicity” and the nature of media as a “field and weapon to address the Party’s thinking and political ideas;”
• guidance on writing critically about Japan, especially the “right-leaning” administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe;
• instructions to critique those who advocate human rights, democracy, or the freedom of the press, as enemies “bent on attacking the teachings of the Communist Party;”
•precepts such as, “the relationship between the Party and the news media is one of leader and the led;”
•topics in “journalistic ethics” and techniques for “preventing rumors.”
Journalists wishing for more detail for the exam can buy a 700-page textbook compiled by the government’s propaganda office and offered for sale in bookstores across China.
The exam is another clear sign of Xi Jinping’s desire to bring the media to heel. Under Xi’s administration Beijing has increasingly tightened controls on social media and the press.
In October, the political commissar of China’s National Defense University declared that “the internet has become the main battlefield in the fight for public opinion,” and that “journalism and propaganda have greater responsibility” to help the government in that ideological fight.
Particularly in the more liberal south of China, some newspapers have gained a reputation for brave, independent reporting on everything from official corruption to public health scandals. Reporters at Southern Weekend, one of the most famous such publications, went on strike in early 2013 after censors rewrote a New Year’s editorial calling for political reforms.
One reporter at a southern publication who spoke to Global Post on condition of anonymity described the new mandatory Marxist training as “ridiculous” and “an absurd waste of resources.”
“Perhaps the basic purpose of the test is to ‘unify people’s thoughts,’ and avoid ‘muddled thinking.’ But using this means to do it absolutely cannot achieve their goal. That is because from the bottom to the top, from the experts to ordinary people, everybody knows that everything is muddled,” the journalist said.
read more:
www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/131220/china-will-require-its-250000-journalists-pass-marxi
Journalists across China are now boning up on Marxist terminology like the “labor theory of value” and “commodity fetishism.”
The United States “is bent on undermining China” — that’s a “fact”they’re committing to memory.
Their jobs depend on it.
Thanks to a new regulation promulgated last fall, all 250,000 of China’s journalists and editors will have to pass an exam on the “Marxist view of journalism” in January or February of 2014. In the several months leading up to the exam, the government has mandated that reporters take weekly classes to ensure “political consistency” with the Communist Party line.
Some reporters who lack ethics still have not surfaced,” one Marxist educator told the state-run Global Times. “We urgently need to educate media circles with the Marxist view of journalism. Such education can’t be loosened and should be conducted in a long term.”
Other exam topics are said to include:
• education in “the leading role of the Party in publicity” and the nature of media as a “field and weapon to address the Party’s thinking and political ideas;”
• guidance on writing critically about Japan, especially the “right-leaning” administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe;
• instructions to critique those who advocate human rights, democracy, or the freedom of the press, as enemies “bent on attacking the teachings of the Communist Party;”
•precepts such as, “the relationship between the Party and the news media is one of leader and the led;”
•topics in “journalistic ethics” and techniques for “preventing rumors.”
Journalists wishing for more detail for the exam can buy a 700-page textbook compiled by the government’s propaganda office and offered for sale in bookstores across China.
The exam is another clear sign of Xi Jinping’s desire to bring the media to heel. Under Xi’s administration Beijing has increasingly tightened controls on social media and the press.
In October, the political commissar of China’s National Defense University declared that “the internet has become the main battlefield in the fight for public opinion,” and that “journalism and propaganda have greater responsibility” to help the government in that ideological fight.
Particularly in the more liberal south of China, some newspapers have gained a reputation for brave, independent reporting on everything from official corruption to public health scandals. Reporters at Southern Weekend, one of the most famous such publications, went on strike in early 2013 after censors rewrote a New Year’s editorial calling for political reforms.
One reporter at a southern publication who spoke to Global Post on condition of anonymity described the new mandatory Marxist training as “ridiculous” and “an absurd waste of resources.”
“Perhaps the basic purpose of the test is to ‘unify people’s thoughts,’ and avoid ‘muddled thinking.’ But using this means to do it absolutely cannot achieve their goal. That is because from the bottom to the top, from the experts to ordinary people, everybody knows that everything is muddled,” the journalist said.
read more:
www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/131220/china-will-require-its-250000-journalists-pass-marxi