Influencing Foreign Correspondents

Okay, this is the part where I impart the secrets about how to influence the foreign correspondents in China to carry out one's own personal agenda.  This comes from my personal experience of many years of successful manipulating them to do my biding.  You too can manipulate them as well.  You have no idea how easy it is.  

All you have to do is remember:

RULE #1: THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS ARE NOT STUPID!

If you forget Rule #1, then you are stupid!!!

Foreign correspondents do not come to a website such as EastSouthWestNorth and just copy-and-paste.  Anyone who does that will probably be dismissed by their employers very quickly.

It is more appropriate to think of EastSouthWestNorth as a tipster calling up the newspaper hotline.  The important thing to note is that EastSouthWestNorth is not a source itself.  After all, a Hong Kong-based blogger cannot have first-hand knowledge of all the latest exciting developments all across China.  For a full story, a foreign correspondent still needs to establish and verify the facts (for example, having two or more "independent sources") as well as decide whether the story is newsworthy for his/her readers.

Let us look at the two most recent examples of 'big-time' news stories in which EastSouthWestNorth was among the first English-language websites to cover them and before any foreign correspondents did so.  This may create the impression that EastSouthWestNorth created, promoted and fulfilled the agenda.  But what is the reality?

The first case is the Shanghai sex blogger Chinabounder.  The exact sequence of events is as follows:

• On August 26, I saw the Professor Zhang at the overseas Chinese forums Wenxue City and 6park.  I said to myself, "UGH!"  I declined to follow up.
• On August 27, I received two emails from readers in China to the effect: "Hey, you've got to translate this."  I waver in my resolution and decide to investigate further.
• On August 28, I checked Professor Zhang's blog and saw that his post had received more than 50,000 hits already.  The post also appeared at BBS forums such as Tianya with many hits.  The Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao reproduced the entire post.  At that time, I knew that this was becoming a major story inside China.  Therefore, I translated Professor Zhang's post into English (at The Immoral Foreign Blogger) and stated why I believe that was likely to become be a major story soon enough.

At this point, what do you think a foreign correspondents does?  Copy-and-paste/paraphrase in order to become the first to break the news?  NO WAY!  Here are some of the things that could and should be done:

• Go read Professor Zhang's post (if you can't read Chinese, you can ask a Chinese assistant to do so).
• Go read the comments in Professor Zhang's post (which were not translated by EastSouthWestNorth) to get a sense of his reader responses.
• Go check his pageview counter (which was going higher and higher).
• Use Baidu/Google to locate the cross postings (and confirm that this post appears at the major BBS's/forums).
• Use Baidu to search Professor Zhang's name in the news.  He has several hundred entries with respect to the Chinabounder affair, including at all the major news portals such as Sina.com, Sohu.com, NetEase.com, Tom.com, QQ.com, etc, and he has done many media interviews.
• Go contact Professor Zhang for a personal interview
• Meanwhile, go read Chinabounder's blog to see if he really wrote what Professor Zhang claimed.  Even after Chinabounder closed his blog, you can still retrieve the entries from the Google cache.
• Go contact Chinabounder himself and ask for comments.
• Research the general situation on Foreign Language Teachers in China from abroad.
• Go ask some bloggers, foreign language teachers and university administrators for comments.
• Then (and only then) you see if all the information that you have gathered and verified makes for a newsworthy story for your readers.

Please go back and re-read these steps -- EastSouthWestNorth is not a source of anything.  You may ask that blogger for an 'expert' opinion (and he does not consider himself an expert in such matters), but he cannot verify any of the facts for you.  EastSouthWestNorth was just a hotline tipster.  Everything else is up to the foreign correspondent doing due diligence.

The second case is FoxConn versus China Business News (aka First Financial Daily).  From August 26, EastSouthWestNorth began a series of blog posts on the developments in the case as well as forum/blog commentaries.  

• FoxConn Sues Newspaper (August 26, 2006)
• FoxConn Sued Newspaper in Taiwan (August 27, 2006)
• The FoxConn-First Financial Daily Case Goes National/Global (August 28, 2006)
• FoxConn Coverage Update (August 29, 2006)
• Western Media Begins FoxConn Coverage (August 29, 2006)
• The PR War of FoxConn versus Media (August 30, 2006)
• My Life As An Activist Journalist  (August 31, 2006)
• Chinese Bloggers on the FoxConn Affair  (September 3, 2006)
• Why The FoxConn Case Should Not Have Been Settled  (September 7, 2006)
• Why FoxConn and China Business News Settled  (September 14, 2006)

I may have insisted that this story was important, but why would a foreign correspondent take my word for either the facts or the importance?  Here are some things that a foreign correspondent could and should do:

• Was there such a lawsuit?  Were the details (such as the $30 million RMB claim in damages against the reporters and the freezing of their personal assets) correct?  Check with the Shenzhen Intermediate Court, FoxConn, China Business News and the two individual reporters, Weng Bao and Wang You.  Ask them for comments.
• Read the blogs of the two individual reporters at Sohu.com, noting that both had drawn more than 1 million visitors within three days with tales of their sobbing mothers.
• Check with Apple Computer for comment (possibly with other companies such as Dell, Sony, Nokia, HP, etc which also use FoxConn as their supplier).
• Check Chinese mainstream reporting and commentary, which was overwhelmingly hostile towards FoxConn.
• Check Chinese forum and blog commentary (especially by media workers), which was overwhelmingly hostile towards FoxConn.
• After FoxConn announced the requested award amount had been reduced from 30 million RMB to a symbolic 1 RMB, re-check with all the principals for reactions.
• Then you decide if all the information that you have gathered and verified makes for a newsworthy story for your readers (and I urge you to go and read Richard Spencer's blog posts What makes news? and Public opinion in China).

Please go back and re-read these steps -- EastSouthWestNorth is not a source for anything.  It only served the function as a hotline tipster.  Everything else was up to the foreign correspondent doing due diligence.

So here is the trick to influencing foreign correspondents.  Remember:

RULE #1: THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS ARE NOT STUPID!

If you are going to influence them to write about a specific case, you do your own due diligence first.  You make sure that you were not being conned.  Then you present all that you already know.  You can try to bully the foreign correspondents, cajole them, harangue them or shame them.  But it does not really matter.  It won't work.  In the final analysis, your presentation must stand on its own merits with respect to the facts and whether they can be verified (as in "two or more independent sources") as well as the newsworthiness to the anticipated audiences.

The other dimension to the situation is that not all tipsters calling into a hotline are the same.  Some tipsters are accorded greater respect, because they have proven themselves with their track records and they always provide the details that allow their tips to be easily followed up and confirmed.  That is where you want to be.

Oh, just to be totally redundant, I remind you with:

RULE #1: THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS ARE NOT STUPID!

And if you are ignored, it is not because they are stupid.  More likely, you were stupid by being conned because the information was false or unverifiable, or else it was not newsworthy.  In any case, whining won't get you anywhere.  Instead, you need to figure out where you came up short.