Media Corporation Clientelism Case Study

Examining the Media-Corporation Clientelism

The evidence presented here demonstrates that the effect of market had been to provide the key mechanism by which the ethics of media have been eroded. Guo Zhenxi and CCTV-2 were selected as illustrative examples to explain the media-corporation clientelism. As the deleterious effects of commercial forces upon public communication, mercenary journalism, or an abused of journalism for economic benefit, is not specific to China. News organizations and journalists in developed countries have had to face the twin impacts of marketized market-driven media: bring economic prosperity to media on the one hand and provide the key mechanism by which the ethics of journalism were eroded on the other. For example,

The monopoly status of CCTV means that it shares unique advantage compared with other types of news organizations in different localities and at different administrative levels. It engages the largest number of audience and the broadest audience reaches. Its monopoly status at the central level guarantees dominant market position, making it the most profitable television station. In addition, as the only national television, CCTV enjoys the public credibility, whose position endorses its role of informing the public with accurate information. In addition, it is absolutely an ill-design to have the same person heading both editorial and advertising department of a broadcast as important as CCTV, which is supposed to erect a strong barrier between the business and editorial side of the station. The separation of editorial and business part of media, or so-called separation of "church and state" is an essential principle to protect the integrity and independence of the news. However, the structural design of CCTV per se centered power in one person and thus facilitated corruption of top executives. The blurry boundary that separates advertising offices and content production at China 's most powerful television station has undoubtedly rendered a group of top executives huge power and tons of opportunities to use programs to promote and publicize their clients '

Wank (1999) in his study suggested that it is nearly impossible not to mention the role of guanxi in the discussion of patron-client ties between economic and political powers. In the same vein, Wang (1998:32) also suggested that the worst scandals in the economic sphere exposed in China have all involved top level bureaucrats and their dependents. The importance of guanxi has been well documented by Fei Xiaotong as a defining feature of Chinese society compared with western Western society. Fei argued that the basic structure of Chinese society is "a differential mode of association", which was composed of distinctive networks spreading out from each individual 's personal connections (Fei, 1992: 65-71). Different from western the ideal Western pattern of society, where all members similar to all straws in a bundle are equivalent, Chinese society is radiated outward from a powerful person where kinship plays an important role. Partly because guanxi is deeply rooted in Chinese society, it became difficult to institutionalize universal standards, which is also one reason underlying the pervasiveness of clientelism in China (Wank, 1999: 10). In my this case study, building personal relationship is not only emphasized by Guo Zhenxi and CCTV-2 but also instrumental in their development of media-corporation clientelism. In the clientelistic relationship, it is not universalized law but