I was at the barber's when I saw familiar scenes on the television, as I lay down to get my hair washed. Premier Wen Jiabao was fielding questions from the press, at the close of the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress. When the barber called me away after the wash, I was a little sorry to go, not because I particularly enjoyed watching the broadcast, but because it made me nostalgic for old times.
A decade or so ago, I would not have been so blase about the national meetings. I would have sat in my living room, turned on the TV, adjusted the volume to the perfect level, and listened attentively to the questions and answers. The man in the hot seat then was premier Zhu Rongji. Compared with Wen, Zhu spoke faster, in firmer tones and was more expressive. But I didn't watch the broadcast for his lively delivery; I watched it to gain information, which I believed my readers were eagerly awaiting.
The Communist Party was just at that time promoting the new slogan of 'ruling the country according to the rule of law'. As a journalist, I joined the many legal scholars, human rights lawyers and some judges who held high hopes for the campaign, and we wholeheartedly advocated the idea. I thought, now that we had had some success solving our economic problems through market reform, it was time we started building a strong society based on the rule of law. Zhu was not the best spokesman for either market reform or governance by rule of law. Nevertheless, we found support in his passionate and fluent words, highlighting and exaggerating those we agreed with, and ignoring those we did not.
Journalists today do the same. They dissected Wen's speech to find positive messages that they could blow up in headlines and quotes. We saw the result after the news conference. A sampling from this year: 'Our confidence is as high and as bright as the sun', 'Corruption is our greatest danger', 'People must be allowed to monitor the government so that grievances may be resolved', 'Political reform should go hand in hand with economic reform', 'Leaders' performance should be judged on advances in fairness, justice and people's livelihood', and so on.
This journalistic approach is markedly different from the critical tone favoured by media in democratic societies.
More journalists than before are being sent to report on the NPC and CPPCC meetings, but I doubt more people than before believe the positive messages they hear. Quite the opposite, in fact. One reason is, with the internet now more widely available, people no longer rely only on traditional media for information, so they are less easy to fool. The other reason is, in some way, social problems have become worse.