Yes the media is owned and controlled by the government but in most day-to-day operations that doesn’t really effect what these professionals do. As in the U.S. the media here is consumed with ratings, celebrity, competition shows, and the competition. And just like America much of the news here is about sports and entertainment stars coupled with stories about government and business news. The big difference, of course, is that the life-blood of American cable news is missing here: Criticism of the government and especially it’s highest ranking officials.

That difference has come into sharp focus this week as the central government in Beijing has put a blogger and a writer on trial for trying to help the families of the victims of last year’s devastating Sichuan earthquake. The scale of the quake’s toil is unimaginable to most Americans. As many as 87,000 people died. At least 10,000 of the dead were schoolkids who died when their classrooms collapsed in daylight tremor. Critics noted that recently-constructed school buildings fell apart while others built at roughly the same time stood. Parents began protesting almost immediately arguing persuasively that government officials in charge of construction allowed schools to be improperly built in exchange for kickbacks.

The central government has fought hard to squelch these protesters including using the army to prevent a group of parents from traveling to Beijing. And of course none of this has been covered by the Chinese media. We knew this but asked anyway: How did your organization cover the Sichuan earthquake? The answers were telling in ways that we didn’t expect.

The first answers were that the news organizations focused on the human toll — how many were still missing, how many needed food and housing. When we asked about the protests and anger among many of the people in the effected region, we were asked how we had covered Katrina. They were able to go into great detail about the failures of the American government there. We asked them how they knew about all this. The answer was obvious.

We went on to explain in great detail how the American media told the story of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. We showed videos of the coverage immediately after the storm passed and investigative pieces that ran in the weeks and months following. We talked about how various media outlets stuck with the story and helped drive a nationwide soul-searching about our government. We told them the political fallout from Katrina, especially to the Republican Party.

In private conversations later we pressed to find out how these media professionals thought about this. Were they secretly chafing under government control? Did they look for ways to get around the restrictions? Did they feel this system was holding back their country? The answers were surprising.

They talked about their ability to do investigative stories on local corruption and how that was really more important to people than criticizing the central government because it was closer to their daily lives. They cited stories on the local bus system in this city and a local businessman who was involved in corruption. But they also bristled at the idea that the national government should be criticized in the way American news organizations do. Clips of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly were met with stunned silence.

Certainly there are people here who are fighting to open China and we wouldn’t expect to find many of them working in the state-run media. And it’s no surprise that a proud people would defend their country to what they might perceive as an challenge from a foreigner (see O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc for the American version of this). But we suspect there’s more here.

Social critics in the west have long argued that our consumer culture accomplishes strong top-down social control by distracting the masses from what the people in power are doing. Whether you believe that or not, talking with young people here certainly makes the argument more persuasive.

The young (25-35) people in our training sessions couldn’t really conceive why they would criticize the central government. They wanted to learn how American Idol and Dancing With the Stars worked and how their own shows like Happy Girl 2009 and Do You Remember? could be better. They wanted to know how we were putting shows on cell phones and the internet. One told us that she reads the New York Times website every day and therefore knows what’s going on in the world. She didn’t really have much interest in news from Beijing critical or otherwise.

It made us think a bit about what’s happening in America where television news and newspapers are dying accelerating deaths. The audience for both is getting older and smaller by the day. Younger Americans long ago turned away from these traditional news sources, instead turning to the internet. Whether on their cell phones, netbooks, or work pc’s, this generation, like their Chinese counterparts, seems to have little appetite for being told what’s news. They make their own decisions.

So does that make China less likely to ever allow criticism of the government? Or will the flood of information available on the web simply overwhelm their heavy-handed attempts at censorship? (Facebook, You Tube, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. are all blocked here.) And will this generation of Chinese people change it all without really meaning to?

The earthquake here was devastating not only in lives lost but also in the loss of face. If the Beijing Olympics were the peak of modern Chinese pride, the earthquake was the hard slap in the face for many here that reminded them that their country has still not “arrived” as a fully modern First World nation. To be sure everyone we talked to knew about the protests in Sichuan and the shameful building practices there. They just didn’t want the rest of the world to know too.

Will Republicans Take the Bait?

Barack Obama may be, above all else, a savvier politician than even Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. Why? With his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court Obama has set a defining trap for Republicans: If they take the bait they will dig themselves deeper into the pit of electoral despair that will take a generation to climb out of.

There are two fundamental things to remember about America and voting: Women vote in bigger percentages than men (plus there are more of them to begin with) and Hispanics are well on their way to becoming the dominant “minority” in the U.S.

In last year’s Presidential election women made up 53% of the vote although they represent just shy of 51% of the population (and 51.6% of the voting age population). Women have traditionally voted more Democratic than men and have favored the Dem Presidential candidate in every election since 1988. That’s twenty years and the trend is not good for the GOP. Obama won the biggest share of women since Reagan crushed Walter Mondale in 1984.

In choosing Sotomayor, Obama is acknowledging both the historic gender imbalance on the Supreme Court (110 members, 108 men) and the smart political play of appointing a woman. Remember who appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court — Reagan, who as we just noted, was the last Republican Presidential candidate to get a huge share of the women’s vote.

If Republicans attack Sotomayor for being “intellectually shallow” or a “bully” they will likely trigger the kind of reaction among women that will hardly help their cause. How often do women hear they aren’t as smart as the guys? How often to we hear about the shrill woman who has to get her way? These are dangerous waters for a party that is already decidedly male in the ranks of both its electeds and voters. Even if these arguments don’t get a full workout, count of the Democratic political team to make sure the media believes Republicans are making these kinds of challenges the center of their opposition to Sotomayor.

The other bait in the trap is even more alluring and dangerous for the GOP. In 1988 Hispanics made up just 3% of those voting for President. By 2000 the number had jumped to 7%. Last year it was 9%. Still not a huge number and not yet the second-largest racial voting group after whites (blacks were 13% in 2008) but growing fast. What’s much more critical about the Hispanic vote is where it is growing. In states like California, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Texas the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly that it is impossible not to count those states trending Democratic over the next decades if the GOP doesn’t figure out how to win over more Hispanics.

This is not a new issue for Republicans. When then-California Governor Pete Wilson blamed the state’s problems on immigrants (later clarifying he meant illegal immigrants but the damage was done) the party was banished to a generational oblivion in the Golden State. Republicans managed to win the Governor’s office back in this decade but only with a “Bloomberg Republican” named Arnold Schwarzenegger. The rest of the state’s party has been pretty moribund since the Wilson fiasco.

George W. Bush recognized this and campaigned hard in 2000 for the Hispanic vote, pushing his party to see the demographic reality. Bush then stuck his neck out on immigration reform in his second term and got it promptly chopped off by his own party.

Of course that hasn’t stopped some conservatives from denying the obvious but the specter of Republicans hammering Sotomayor on immigration or racial decisions must bring big smiles to the Obama White House. Fox News was off to a fast start highlighting a Sotomayor ruling in the case of white firefighters in New Haven suing for reverse-discrimination just minutes after the President’s Sotomayor news conference ended.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Republicans is that they have so few (any?) credible, prominent women or Latinas to make their case against Sotomayor no matter what ammo they decide to use on her. There are only three female Republican Senators and two voted for Sotomayor when she was elevated to the Appellate Court by Bill Clinton in 1998. Both are also among the last remaining moderates in the shrinking GOP caucus. Don’t expect (Ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee) Jeff Sessions to convince Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins to be the spokeswoman for the “Republicans Against Sotomayor” campaign. As for big-name Republican Latinas, forget it.

Indeed the biggest voice against Sotomayor so far is (surprise surprise!) Rush Limbaugh who said on the radio after the announcement that he hoped she “fails.” That sounds familiar doesn’t it? If Rush is the Republican spokesman on this those White House smiles will get even bigger.

So the trap is baited and set. Will Republicans bite? Obama certainly hopes so.

President Barack Obama

Having just wrapped up a round of radio interviews with stations around the country it looks like the proverbial “Is the honeymoon over?” story is gaining traction. The cumulative effect of a badly marketed (and some say badly devised) stimulus plan coupled with his nominees’ tax problems is that Barack Obama has used up a fair amount of his political capital in a few short weeks.

Of course Obama started with more political capital than any President since FDR so he’s still got plenty of it and his mea cupla yesterday (“I screwed up”) was the perfect antidote to the start-up troubles his Administration has faced. His admissions of mistakes coupled with his acceptance of responsibility is the kind of thing Americans have forgotten people in power actually do.

Remember George W Bush was famously unable to think of any mistakes he had made as President when asked  at televised prime-time news conference in April 2004 what his biggest error had been. And Bill Clinton “did not have sex with that woman.” In Japan executives resign in disgrace when their companies lose money and have to lay people off. In America passing the buck is a time-honored way to the top and failure (especially on Wall Street) is a surefire way to make a fortune.

So what a refreshing change for the President to fess up. But it won’t help keep the honeymoon alive if Obama doesn’t move quickly to restore voters’ faith in him and his party.

Democrats have rebounded by being the party of 1) competence and 2) the working man/woman. When several of Obama’s nominees are discovered not to have paid taxes it undercuts those central themes. If Tom Daschle really didn’t know about the taxes he owed, is he competent to reinvent America’s health care system? And how close to the working folk can Democrats and the Obama White House be when those unpaid taxes were for the use of a privately-supplied limo? That’s what Republicans are supposed to get caught doing!

Obama still enjoys a deep well of support with Americans even if polls show his approval ratings have now come down into the range of mere mortals. A majority of Americans want him to succeed because his failure will be their failure. But their patience is not unlimited.

The nominee problems (if they are over) will be quickly forgotten because right now — and for the foreseeable future — it’s the economy stupid. The stimulus bill (why didn’t they call it a jobs bill? PR 101 folks!) will take time to kick in so the next few weeks are more important to Obama than he may realize. If the American people begin to believe that Obama can NOT turn this economy around then the honeymoon will, at that point, be over. The clock is ticking.