Gender Roles in Chinese Broadcast News

^{China is a country drenched in history and traditions, many of which affect gender roles in the modern Chinese society. The country’s broadcast news is not exempt from the far-reaching effects of Communist government influence and the role of women in a nation with an ancient past. By comparing story content and the genders of reporters and subjects in a week of newscasts from CCTV (China Central Television) to a week of the U.S. channel ABC-TV newscasts, broader conclusions about the role of women in Chinese media can be drawn. Comparing the two country’s broadcast news also can give us a window into the freedom of the Chinese press compared to the relatively free press of the United States.}

^{Before delving into Chinese media, however, some brief background information about the country is needed. China is the world’s fourth-largest country and is located in Eastern Asia between North Korea and Vietnam. It borders the East China Sea, Korea Bay, Yellow Sea and South China Sea. China is slightly smaller than the United States, with a total of 9,596,960 sq km in area. Its climate is diverse, ranging from tropical in south to sub-arctic in the north. The majority of the country is mountainous, with coal, iron ore, petroleum and natural gas among its leading natural resources. As China industrializes rapidly, it faces increasing environmental issues, such as air pollution, deforestation, water pollution and a significant loss in agricultural land since 1949 due to development and soil erosion (CIA World Factbook Web site).}

^{The problems caused by China relatively recent industrialization come after a long and turbulent history in which the country experienced extreme highs and lows. For centuries, China flourished as a leading civilization in the arts, culture and sciences. Then in the 19th and 20th centuries, the country fell prey to civil unrest, famines, military defeats and foreign occupation. After World War II, Mao Zedong established his Communist, autocratic socialist government and implemented a system that placed strict controls over citizens’ everyday daily routines and cost many millions more their lives. Zedong’s rule promised China’s sovereignty, though, and in 1978 his successor, Deng Xiaoping, focused on improving economic development and making China a leading nation in the world’s modern economy. Because of his efforts, China’s production quadrupled by 2000. Although living standards and personal freedoms also have improved, government control over Chinese people and media remains strict (CIA World Factbook Web site).}

^Domestic

^{Domestic/Int’l}

^{International}

^TOTAL

^Men

^{8 (72.7%)}

^{3 (25%)}

^{28 (71.8%)}

^{39 (62.9%)}

^Women

^{3 (27.3%)}

^{9 (75%)}

^{11 (28.2%)}

^{23 (37.1%)}

^{62 (100%)}

^Category

^{# of Stories}

^Expert

⁶

^{Chinese politician}

²

^{Foreign politician}

²

^Mother

²

^Other

²

^CEO

¹

^{Natural disaster survivor}

¹

^{Woman on street}

¹

^TOTAL

¹⁷

^Topic

^{# (2 per story)}

^{Diplomatic activity between states}

³⁶

^{Politics within states}

²⁶

^{Scientifics, technical, medical}

²⁰

^{Economic matters}

¹⁹

^{International aid}

¹⁸

^{Social services}

¹⁷

^{Natural disasters}

¹⁴

^{Military/defense}

¹³

^{Crime, police, legal including terrorism}

⁶

^{Culture, arts, archaeology, history, language}

⁴

^Sports

³

^{Entertainment, show business (except personalities)}

²

^{Human interest, odd happenings, animals, sex}

²

^Other

²

^Weather

²

^Accidents

²

^{Personalities (not politicians): sports, entertainers, others}

¹

^{Student matters, education}

¹

^TOTAL

¹⁸⁸

^{As of July 2005, China’s population was estimated at 1.3 billion and growing. Ninety-one percent of the population is considered part of the Han Chinese ethnic group, with other closely related Asian ethnic groups rounding out the country’s demographic profile. The major religions in China are Daoism and Buddhism, although the government forces schools to teach atheism. The average Chinese woman has 1.72 children, according to the country’s current fertility rate. A sharp difference in the sexes is illustrated by the country’s 2002 literacy rates, however: while 95.1 percent of men can read and write, only 86.5 percent of women can (CIA World Factbook Web site).}

^{Chinese mass media, like its people, are strictly controlled and influenced by the government. According to a 2005 country report by Freedom House, an organization that ranks the level of freedom in a country’s mass media, China is ranked as “not free.” The report reads that “Press freedom is severely limited. The government bars the media from criticizing senior CCP leaders or their policies, challenging CCP ideology, and discussing ‘sensitive topics’ – in particular, constitutional reform, political reform, and reconsideration of the 1989 Tiananmen movement,” (Freedom House Web site, www.freedomhouse.org). The report emphasizes the fact that Chinese journalists who violate the government’s rules are harassed, fined and/or jailed. The government owns all TV and radio news outlets and most print media, using them to support and spread its ideology. The Chinese government also censures foreign media coming into the country, as well as deciding which Web sites can and cannot be accessed on the Internet (Freedom House Web site, www.freedomhouse.org).}

^{Chinese Media: Tables and Descriptions}

^{CHINA: CCTV NEWS, OCT. 24-29, 2005}

^{TABLE I. GENDER OF REPORTERS: INTERNATIONAL & DOMESTIC NEWS}

^{Table I shows that overall, men report almost twice as many news stories as women on CCTV. This gender balance is actually better than that of the U.S. news on ABC, where men reported more than four times as many news stories than women (ABC News handout, Table I). The ABC news information is based on news stories coded during the week of Feb. 7-11, 2005. TABLE II. WOMEN AS NEWSMAKERS (descending order)}

^{From Table II it is evident that only 17 of the newsmakers featured in the stories were women. This is in sharp contrast to the ABC findings, in which 36 female newsmakers were reported though there were fewer total news stories for the week analyzed.}

^{TABLE III. TOPICS (descending order)}

^{Table III. shows that the majority of the CCTV stories were about diplomatic activities between states or politics within states, followed by related issues such as international aid and economic matters. Scientific news also was common. These findings are quite similar to the ABC findings.}

^{ISSUE 1: ANCHORS}

^{ISSUE 2: AGE}

^{ISSUE 3: RACE}

^DISCUSSION

^{When compared to the ABC newscasts, CCTV was much more equal than the U.S. channel in the gender of the reporters. This finding is understandable when examined in the context of Hofstede’s 2001 data on the Masculinity Index Values for 50 Countries and Three Regions. According to this data, the United States has a masculinity index rating of 62; though mainland China is not included in the Hofstede data, Taiwan and Hong Kong are and were given ratings of 57 and 45, respectively.}

^{The relative balance between male and female CCTV reporters also extends to the types of stories covered by each gender. Women reporters covered international, domestic and domestic/int’l stories, and there did not seem to be a distinction between the types of stories covered by male and female reporters. However, out of the few cultural or human interest stories that appeared on the Chinese newscasts, women reported the majority of them.}

^{In the Chinese newscasts, the government censorship of stories, particularly those that focused on Chinese governmental affairs, was obvious. Most domestic news stories were about summits or meetings of leaders, commemorations, celebrations and other positive events. Some of the footage for those stories actually seemed staged – several meetings between Chinese and foreign leaders appeared to be so, for example. This finding relates to the Freedom House rankings discussed earlier, in which China was rated as having media that are definitely “not free.” Compared to the United States’ ranking of “free,” the difference between the two is evident in watching their respective newscasts.}

^{Overall, coding and examining Chinese newscasts for gender roles revealed media that are relatively equal among the sexes in those reporting the news (reporters and anchors), but relatively unequal in featuring female newsmakers when compared to the United States. While the differences are striking and surprising, the conflicting Chinese findings also are representative of a strict Communist country torn between modernization and maintaining its autonomy in the developing world.}

^{The most interesting finding in this analysis of CCTV was the lack of women as newsmakers compared to the larger number of female reporters and anchors. While there were 23 total
female reporters, there were only 17 female newsmakers. This could be due in part to the large number of stories that focused on politics within China, an area where fewer women hold positions than men. This is somewhat opposite of the United States findings on ABC, in which there were actually more women as newsmakers than female reporters. The types of female newsmakers also differed between the two countries; while political figures made up a substantial portion of the ABC female newsmakers, experts made up the overwhelming majority of Chinese female newsmakers on CCTV. Nathan Mager, who reported only one story, was the only minority reporter – he was British or Australian. Edwin Maher, one of the anchors, was a white Briton as well. All other reporters and anchors sounded (most stories only featured the reporter’s voice and did not show them on camera) or appeared to be Chinese. Edwin Maher appeared to be over 50. No female anchors or reporters who were seen on camera appeared to be over 50.On two of the days the anchor was a white British male named Edwin Maher. The other four days were anchored by two different Chinese females, Li Dongning and Liang Hong. To compare the role of women in Chinese news media compared to American news media, a week of the Chinese news broadcasts on CCTV were coded and analyzed. The tables below show the results of this coding.}

Reference:

• www.freedomhouse.org