[The network’s more than 10,000 employees are on edge. The practice of trading positive coverage for cash is so prevalent, many say, that everyone lives in fear that employees who have been detained will reveal details about their colleagues. Like others for this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the authorities for talking about the continuing investigations.]
[The network’s more than 10,000 employees are on edge. The practice of trading positive coverage for cash is so prevalent, many say, that everyone lives in fear that employees who have been detained will reveal details about their colleagues. Like others for this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the authorities for talking about the continuing investigations.]
By Edward Wong
 |
|
Wang Qinglei, a former
producer who worked at China Central
Television, or CCTV, from 2003
until he was fired in 2013 for
publicly denouncing propaganda
on the network, at his new
office in Beijing.
|
BEIJING — As President Xi Jinping accelerated
his sweeping campaign against government corruption, political enemies and
Western influences in China, he deployed the Communist Party’s most powerful
propaganda tool, the state television network, like a hammer.
News programs on the network, China Central
Television, showed confessions by
prominent businessmen before they had even been put on trial. Foreign companies
like Apple were smeared by so-called investigations programs. Heavily edited
excerpts from the trial of a fallen party leader were broadcast in prime time
to hundreds of millions of viewers.
But now the wrath of the party has turned on
the network itself. A party inquiry into corruption at CCTV, as the network is
known, has shaken up the nation’s most influential news and propaganda
organization, riveting the country with reports involving a seamy mix of
celebrities, sex and bribery.
At least 15 senior network employees have
disappeared into the maw of party and state detention, according to official
news reports and people who have been tracking the investigations. The most
famous, Rui Chenggang, 37,a smooth-talking financial news anchor who
wore Italian suits and drove a Jaguar, was noticeably absent last month from
the annual conference of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, where
he had been a fixture for years.
The network’s more than 10,000 employees are
on edge. The practice of trading positive coverage for cash is so prevalent,
many say, that everyone lives in fear that employees who have been detained
will reveal details about their colleagues. Like others for this article, they
spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the
authorities for talking about the continuing investigations.
Managers hesitate to make big decisions. The
move into the new landmark CCTV
headquarters, which has been mostly empty since its facade was
completed in 2008, has stalled, and some high-budget documentary projects have
been frozen.
Executives and producers, afraid of making
themselves conspicuous targets, are leaving their luxury cars in their garages.
Among the top ranks, figuring out how to stop journalists from taking bribes
from the people they interview has become a priority, CCTV employees said.
The turmoil at the network comes at a time
when it has become both the spearhead of China’s propaganda efforts in foreign
countries and a more expansive global news conduit for an estimated 700 million
Chinese viewers.
“A nation’s TV station is the face for the
entire nation,” said Wang
Qinglei, a former producer who worked at CCTV from 2003 until he was
fired in 2013 for publicly denouncing propaganda on the network. “Now this face
is dirty and full of mud. There should be a cleansing process to wash it, so
the entire nation can be proud again.”
The party’s investigations of the network
follow two main strands that overlap. One is corrupt business practices,
particularly at CCTV 2, the financial news channel where Mr. Rui worked. The other
involves the relationships, sometimes intimate, that some party leaders had
with anchors and executives at the network, many of whom are also at CCTV 2.
The widespread gossip about
sex between network employees and government officials could not be
independently confirmed, but some personal ties are well known. Mr. Rui, for
example, hosted events for Gu Liping, who is now detained on suspicion of
corruption and illicit financial dealings and is the wife of Ling Jihua, an
aide to former President Hu Jintao. The couple has been placed under
investigation.
At least one current and one former female
CCTV anchor who have been detained are being scrutinized for close ties to Zhou
Yongkang, the former security chief and the most senior party official to be arrested in decades for
corruption, according to executives and journalists working for CCTV
and other news institutions. Mr. Zhou’s second wife, who is a former CCTV
journalist and is 28 years his junior, has also been detained.
Li Dongsheng, a close associate of Mr. Zhou
and a 22-year employee of CCTV, is suspected by investigators of having
introduced young women at the network to Mr. Zhou and other officials for
sexual encounters in violation of party rules, the journalists and executives
said. When Mr. Zhou was expelled from the party last December, Xinhua, the
official state news agency, said he had “committed adultery with a number of
women and traded his power for money and sex.”
Mr. Li, who rose to become deputy director of
the propaganda department and then vice minister of public security, has been
detained since December 2013.
The investigations are casting a long shadow
over a vast propaganda apparatus with global ambitions. CCTV began a big
international push around 2008 and now has 70 news bureaus overseas, including
a flagship in Washington. CCTV channels broadcast programming around the world
in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
In 2011, the network started a documentary
channel to compete with the kind of high-end programming seen on BBC. It has
bought the rights to many foreign documentaries and hired prominent Western
producers like Phil Agland.
But since the detention last July of the ambitious head of the channel, Liu Wen,
some major projects have been halted, employees said.
Current and former employees and news media
analysts say the revelations, along with a renewed emphasis on propaganda, have
further damaged CCTV’s credibility.
“It is shocking how corrupt the Chinese media
is,” Zhan Jiang, a professor of journalism and media studies at Beijing Foreign
Studies University, said in a recent online discussion.
“It is the most corrupt in the world. To put it bluntly, it is the shame of our
country.”
CCTV declined repeated requests for an
interview.
Mr. Wang, the former producer, said he did not
think Mr. Xi’s anticorruption campaigns would cure the ills of the network or
China’s one-party system.
“This anticorruption campaign is very much a
tool of political struggle,” he said. “All it will do is strike down one
faction. But the system is not changed in any way.”
Indeed, the party has taken the corruption
investigation as an opportunity to reinforce the network’s propaganda role,
ordering up more old-school stories about common Chinese and their daily
struggles. Reporters have been told to emphasize “moral values and social
virtues.”
“We are now directed to place more emphasis on
the common man, farmers and migrant workers,” one journalist said.
The corruption that permeated the network had
been an open secret for years. At its simplest level, reporters and producers
take modest bribes in exchange for positive coverage. Journalists typically
receive up to $160, known as “red envelopes” or “taxi fare,” as a token of
thanks from sources. Network employees say much larger fees are sometimes
negotiated, according to the type of coverage.
Several people said one central investigation,
involving the anchors and executives of CCTV 2, the financial news channel, was
focused on large-scale bribetaking as well as ties to corrupt party leaders.
Mr. Rui was the channel’s most famous anchor and had boasted of friendships
with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger; former Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd of Australia; and Richard C. Levin, who was president of Yale until 2013.
The head of CCTV 2, Guo Zhenxi, was detained
last June, a month before Mr. Rui was. Security officers seized Mr. Rui at the
studio on a Friday afternoon, leaving an empty co-anchor’s
chair that night on his program, “Economic News.”
When officials decided years ago to make CCTV
more market-driven, the director of CCTV 2 was put in charge of both news
programming and business operations, a dual role that offers many opportunities
for corruption. “Everyone at CCTV knows this setup is illogical and
unreasonable,” said Mr. Wang, the former producer.
Financial irregularities emerged during a
six-month audit that was completed last year, Mr. Wang and others said.
Information released by state news outlets
points to Mr. Rui’s own mixing of journalism and business as a central part of
the case against him. In 2002, he helped found a public relations firm, Pegasus
Communications, that was bought five years later by the American public
relations company Edelman. Mr. Rui held stock in Pegasus until 2010, according
to government documents posted online by a Chinese news organization.
In 2009 and 2010, while Mr. Rui was still a
part owner of Pegasus, the company provided services at
Davos to CCTV 2, Mr. Rui’s employer, arranging for a studio
there, according to an earlier statement from Edelman and Chinese news reports.
Corruption takes place in other ways at CCTV.
Budget padding is common, several employees said; people who draw up or approve
budgets for productions sometimes request more money than is needed so that
they can pocket some of the cash.
One senior journalist said he believed the
authorities intended for the investigations to be cautionary lessons for other
organizations in the news media and beyond. “The crackdown at CCTV was designed
to create shock waves in society,” he said.
At the moment, though, the tumult is greatest
at the center.
“Recently I spoke to another director of
programming at CCTV, who is leaving,” Mr. Wang said. “This person told me,
‘Each day I spend at CCTV is another day I’m spending in shame.’”
An employee of The New York Times contributed
reporting. Mia Li contributed research.
