Their Master’s Voice

If anybody doubts that our future will be mixed up with the People’s Republic of China, The Scrapbook invites you to take a stroll along New York Avenue in Washington, D.C., and gape at the big new office building going up within easy walking distance of the White House. It’s the Washington headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV), from which English-language news broadcasts with a Beijing twist will be coming soon to a cable service near you.

Apparently, the Chinese believe that their country doesn’t get favorable coverage in the world’s press because the world’s press is, of course, largely non-Chinese. The Scrapbook isn’t so sure about this (have they not been enjoying Thomas Friedman’s New York Times columns in Beijing?), but if it works for the BBC and Al Jazeera and Voice of America, why shouldn’t it work for the world’s largest Communist dictatorship?

This sort of news is, of course, catnip to The Scrapbook. The Chinese seem to believe one of the enduring myths of modern democracy: namely, that the only thing a Great Power needs to succeed in the world is (a) power and (b) good public relations. It also proves that countless journalists can be bought, if the price is right.

According to the Washington Post, CCTV’s new outpost has hired some 60 ink-stained wretches “from NBC, Bloomberg TV, Fox News, and other Western news organizations,” and all are committed to “report without fear or favor, free from government manipulation and second-guessing.”

They insist that the network will have autonomy from Beijing, and that its journalists are seasoned professionals who understand the difference between government propaganda and news.