Chinese News Media Bias Tobacco Control Coverage

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Chinese news media, showing bias in covering major developments in the area of tobacco control, significantly played up serious public concerns about hazards of cigarette smoking in reporting results of a recent research report on the trend of tobacco consumption in China released by The Lancet medical journal.

By TobaccoChina Online

Tobacco and tobacco control have always been major topics of discussion arousing attention from both the public and news media. On October 9, The Lancet – a famous international medical science journal – released a forward-looking research report on the trend of cigarette smoking in China by both male and female smokers.

Once its contents were carried by international news outlets and were made available in China, the research report immediately received widespread attention from leading Chinese news media, which clamored to report excerpts and conclusion of the report.

It is tenable to say that there were only two major hot issues in news media coverage in China this October – “One million people died in 2010 as a result of cigarette smoking” and “The toxicity of ham sausages can well match that of arsenic”.

However, there are many more issues that deserve study and proof in the media coverage concerning the research report released by The Lancet. Meanwhile, the attitude of Chinese news media toward tobacco control can be well reviewed.

For the media, their news coverage must be objective and impartial, and they should strive to tell the truth to their readers and audience. But there do exist some media that make a deliberate attempt at misinterpretation out of context in reporting findings in The Lancet report.

For example, a biological science website mentions the release of the latest report as follows: Unless there is an immediate secession of smoking, tobacco consumption is set to kill every 1 in 3 Chinese young men. The last sentence in the first paragraph of this report reads: “Unless a significant number of them quit, 1 in 3 of all young men in China will eventually be killed by tobacco.” Reading this sentence, one can’t help but think that a large number of young men will die shortly after smoking. Such is just one characteristic of this narrative: it smartly conceals the length of the period from the time of smoking to the time of death. In reality, it is not the case that young men will die shortly after smoking. Instead, in the next few decades, some of the young men will die of diseases related to cigarette smoking. Although the statement of the aforesaid sentence makes it difficult for one to determine that its way of narration is absolutely wrong, the key information omitted therein makes it possible for one to fall into this trap. If it were true that cigarette smoking could quickly kill one-third of all young men in China, the government would have shut down all cigarette factories a long time ago. Such news reports are openly misleading their readers with their biased coverage.

In some of their reporting, the media often take a predetermined position and released biased coverage. A news website released an article titled Latest Report of the World Health Organization: Raising Tobacco Tax Can Save Lives. Apart from the term “saving lives”, the article also uses such expressions as “tobacco causes deaths” and “lethal products”, which must be taken very seriously in news coverage. Any abuse of such strong terminology may easily cause distortion of facts.

Take the title of the aforesaid article for example. It indicates that raising tobacco tax can save lives, not only implying that tobacco manufacturers are killing smokers like murderers, but also underestimating the intelligence of smokers by viewing them as money-making entities without self-awareness who are completely manipulated by others. However, tobacco is merely a commodity – a commodity whose hazards are vigorously and publicly exaggerated and yet, people are still willing to buy it. Buyers of tobacco products do not need other people to “rescue” them. The relationship between the seller and the buyer of tobacco products is that of willingness and mutual consent. It does not mean that one side is forcing the other into something they don’t want to do. The aforesaid highly biased article not only fails to mention the real fact, but is also only dishonest and runs counter to the tenets of unbiased reporting.

Some news reports on hazards of tobacco use seemingly serious but actually insignificant research conclusions, or even rumors, to exaggerate the extent of the harm caused by tobacco products. For example, a news report titled Half a Cigarette Poisons a Laboratory Rat to Death in Four Minutes and 11 Seconds.

The report said that in an experiment, a group of researchers injected a rat with a milliliter of liquid in which half a cigarette had been soaked, and that in four minutes and 11 seconds, the rat died. Therefore, they believed that the experiment proved how toxic cigarettes were. But in reality, any reader with common sense and even the most basic understanding of science will realize that this experiment is meaningless – the experiment mechanism itself is seriously problematic, let alone the existence of no normal control groups. Direct injection of any liquid into a rat may quickly result in the rat’s death, regardless of whether this was a liquid containing tobacco, some sugar water, or even distilled water. Obviously, some media have very little understanding of science, and report such “scientific conclusions” that actually prove or identify absolutely nothing about tobacco.

Based on the aforementioned examples, it is clear that in their coverage of tobacco and tobacco control issues, some Chinese media channels and outlets are highly biased, and are hell-bent on showing support for tobacco control irrespective of the truth. This means that the bias of some Chinese news media actually stems from a type of prejudice rooted in social culture, which is highly consistent – the prejudice against tobacco, rather than from the unavoidable and arbitrary personal attitude in news coverage by different media organizations.

Although one cannot draw a conclusion that the prejudice against cigarette smoking originates from the sensationalization by the mainstream media or from spontaneous hatred of tobacco by the public, the present situation is that increasing prejudice against tobacco generated by news coverage and the people’s conservative impression of tobacco are influencing and strengthening each other. Whenever there is a need to report on tobacco or tobacco control, it seems that the mainstream media feel that they must show their support for tobacco control in an effort to appease the public, which, quite obviously, enables them to look like socially responsible news outlets. However, that happens at a cost: their reporting is a deviation of the principle of objectivity and impartiality, a distortion of facts, and, in fact, weakens the independent thinking and judgment capacity of readers and audiences.

If we go back to the report on the trend of tobacco consumption in China released by The Lancet, the report mainly focuses on the situation of cigarette smoking by male and female smokers in China over a period of time, and also on certain diseases and the mortality rate caused by cigarette smoking. In particular, the most sensationalized part of the report is the conclusion that one in three young men in China will eventually be killed by cigarette smoking. The relevant original sentence reads: “…by 2050, there will have been about 3 million Chinese tobacco deaths, when those born in 1970 reach the age of 80.”

Here, the media ignores the year 2050 and “the age of 80”, which would be 35 years from now. By then, those people will no longer be young men. After realizing these facts, one will clearly see that some media channels deliberately omitted the two essential factors in their coverage, and secretly changed the concept of 80-year-old “young men”.

It is quite natural that when it comes to any objective facts, different people will have different points of view. As far as cigarettes are concerned, there will be some people who like them and those who don’t. But the role of the media seems to be to replay and publicize the scenes of the relevant events. How to view events and how to make a choice should be a personal call by every member of the public. However, the present situation is that in their coverage, the mainstream media in China (and, truth be told, elsewhere) deliberately add some falsehoods or threats, thus increasing the sense of dislike or fear toward tobacco on the part of the general public, making such decisions increasingly based on belief rather than evidence.

Thomas Jefferson once said that the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. Genuinely responsible media should tell people the truth, even if the truth does not support their chosen narrative. They should enlighten their readers with the truth, rather than lead them into needless deception. The public’s confidence in their media can only grow through truthful and objective coverage.