The Comparison between Chinese and American Media on Reporting the Independence of Kosovo

Kosovo announced its independence to the whole world on February 17^th, 2007. Kosovo, once an autonomous province of former Yugoslav Republic of the Union of Serbia, started fighting for independence since 1980^th. Since then, discussion on this issue in United Nation has always had no results and the confliction in that area has never stopped. Consequently, Kosovo’s announcement was like a bomb which attracted all countries’ attention. It became the headline of every media’s news on that day. Here I just want to make a comparison between Chinese media and American media on this issue. The source I use is basically from CNN’s news on website, peoplle.com.cn and Phoenix TV’s news on website.

First of all, after browsed all these websites, the first impression I got was that Chinese media seemed to pay more attention on this issue. All of these three media especially set a column for it but Chinese media made more specifically report. In people.com.cn and Phoenix TV’s website, we can see there are different categories which are latest news update, background information, professional view, reaction all over the world and related pictures and videos. On the other hand, in the CNN’s website, although there are different categories, the content is not as rich as Chinese ones. For example, there is not so much deep analysis from experts and there are also not so many related pictures reports in the website.

Secondly, the angle of the reports in Chinese and America media is different from each other. In CNN’s website, we can see reports about the refugees, Yugoslavia’s future, military campaign and peace settlement, which focus more on the Kosovo and Yugoslavia themselves. In Chinese media website, however, what we can see is reports about the reaction of other countries, the effect of Kosovo’s independence and the analysis about the inside of its independence, which focus more on the whole world. Certainly, it does not mean that the more international angle the reports are, the better they will be. In my opinion, the media has its right to choose how to report an event. I also believe that the choice will be affected by culture, as well as official political views.

The other aspect I want to mention is that, in these two Chinese media websites, both of them talked about the news that Kosovo claimed that the government would not accept the admission from TaiWan government while the CNN’s website did not mention it at all. I think it reflected that the media in China speaks for the government. It is plain to see that the government wanted to use this piece of news to say to the whole country or to TaiWan government that there is no hope for TaiWan to be independent because no countries in the world will support TaiWan’s independence even a brand new country. I can understand that it may be natural for to connect this two issues together in China. But I still think that the media gave too much to this piece of news, which made this issue like a political tool for Chinese government. As media, what they should do I think is to focus on the issue itself to report more the situation now happening in Kosovo. On the other hand, I think it may be not fair to push all responsibility to media because the model of Chinese media system and the relation between media and government also decide what media can do.

The main purpose of this comparison is not to find out which one did a better job in this issue. The difference can not only show us the distinction of the reports themselves, but also reflect the distinction of media environment and culture.