{"id":26623,"date":"2012-04-08T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-08T14:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=26623 "},"modified":"2012-04-08T14:21:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-08T14:21:00","slug":"26623-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=26623","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Press Articles Can Be Bought for the Right Price"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">SHANGHAI &#8212; China is notorious for censoring politically delicate news coverage. But it is more than willing to let flattering news about Western and Asian businesses appear in print and broadcast media &#8212; if the price is right.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Want a profile of your chief executive to appear in the Chinese version of Esquire? That will be about $20,000 a page, according to the advertising department of the magazine, which has a licensing agreement with the Hearst Corporation in the United States.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Need to get your top executive on a news program by state-run China Central Television? Pay $4,000 a minute, says a network consultant who arranges such appearances.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">A flattering article about your company in Workers&#8217; Daily, the Communist Party&#8217;s propaganda newspaper? About $1 per Chinese character, the paper&#8217;s advertising agent said.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Though Chinese laws and regulations ban paid promotional material that is not labeled as such, the practice is so widespread that many publications and broadcasters even have rate cards listing news-for-sale prices.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">And while Western companies and many Chinese journalists are loath to discuss the subject, public relations and advertising firms are sometimes surprisingly candid about their roles as brokers in buying flattering coverage, referred to here as &#8220;soft news&#8221; or &#8220;paid news.&#8221;<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Ogilvy &amp; Mather, one of the world&#8217;s biggest public relations and advertising agencies, acknowledged that it pays Chinese media o<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">utlets for client coverage in some categories.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">&#8220;Our policy is to advise our clients to not participate in such activities,&#8221; the agency&#8217;s Beijing office wrote in an e-mail, in response to a reporter&#8217;s questions. &#8220;However, in some industries, such as luxury, the practice of soft news placements is very common so this is something that we have also done before.&#8221;<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">A Chinese account manager for another American public relations firm was strikingly frank about paying for coverage, although she spoke only on condition of anonymity to avoid riling her industry colleagues and her employer.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">&#8220;If you want more media coverage, that&#8217;s easy to do &#8212; we have plenty of channels to get your company shown on television, and in top magazines and newspapers,&#8221; she said in a telephone interview.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Media specialists, and Chinese journalists intent on playing by ethical rules, deplore the paid placements they say are all too co<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">mmon in the nation&#8217;s media.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><span style=\"color: #2d2d2d; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', 'Segoe UI', Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-left; font-size: 12pt; background-color: #ffffff; \"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Continue reading&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/thelede.blogs.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/05\/journalists-should-be-government-mouthpieces-chinas-state-tv-president-says\/?ref=china#h[]\" style=\"color: #034af3; text-decoration: none; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', 'Segoe UI', Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: #ffffff; \"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/04\/business\/media\/flattering-news-coverage-has-a-price-in-china.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=1&amp;sq=china&amp;st=Search&amp;scp=8\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', 'Segoe UI', Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: #ffffff; color: #034af3; \"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; \"><strong>original article<\/strong><\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #2d2d2d; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; \">.<\/span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/><div>&nbsp;<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Despite the fact that there are numerous laws on the books prohibiting paid promotional material that has not been labeled so, the problem of paid publishing is rampant. &amp;nbsp;Some media services are even brash about the practice, going so far as to provide rate cards for prospective customers.&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}