The People's Daily: Politics and Popular Will-Journalistic Defiance in China During the Spring of 1989

Abstract

C HINA'S DRAMATIC POLITICAL UPHEAVAL in the spring of 1989, when student demonstrators occupied Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing to demand greater democratic rights, and hundreds of thousands of citizens in urban centers throughout the country poured into the streets in solidarity with the protesters, received saturation coverage by the western media. Less visible abroad, but crucially important to the Chinese audience, was the role that China's domestic news media played in both reflecting and supporting the protest movement. Journalists from official news organizations became active participants in the protest movement, not only taking to the streets themselves but also bolstering the movement through the content and conduct of their work. 1 This study is a detailed examination of one aspect of that journalistic activism, namely how editors and reporters at the very pinnacle of the official news apparatus defied, fought and circumvented government suppression in their efforts to promote the cause of the demonstrators and express their own aspirations for greater democracy. The inquiry focuses on two months of news coverage and other editorial content in the People's Daily, the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, from the inception of the protests in mid-April to the weeks following their suppression by armed force on June 4. It examines how that newspaper managed not only to cover news of the uprising, but also to convey discontent and protest against the country's political authorities through all sorts of editorial techniques including story selection and placement, headline creation, page design, writing style, and other aspects of news content and presentation.'