Despite persistent pressure from state censors and other tools of political control, investigative journalism has flourished in China over the last decade. This volume offers a comprehensive, first-hand look at investigative journalism in China, including insider accounts from reporters behind some of China's top stories in recent years. While many outsiders hold on to the stereotype of Chinese journalists as docile, subservient Party hacks, a number of brave Chinese reporters have exposed corruption and official misconduct with striking ingenuity and often at considerable personal sacrifice. Subjects have included officials pilfering state funds, directors of public charities pocketing private donations, businesses fleecing unsuspecting consumers - even the misdeeds of journalists themselves. These case studies address critical issues of commercialization of the media, the development of ethical journalism practices, the rising specter of "news blackmail," negotiating China's mystifying bureaucracy, the dangers of libel suits, and how political pressures impact different stories. During fellowships at the Journalism & Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong, these narratives and other background materials were fact-checked and edited by JMSC staff to address critical issues related to the media transitions currently under way in the PRC. This engaging narrative gives readers a vivid sense of how journalism is practiced in China. --David Bandurski is a scholar at the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project, a research and fellowship initiative of the Journalism & Media Studies Centre. Martin Hala has taught journalism at the Universities in Prague and Bratislava. -

A mixture of fieldwork and analysis of internal and public documents and media cases accurately survey the field and put it in context. >

Maria Repnikova offers an innovative analysis of the media oversight role in China by examining how a volatile partnership is sustained between critical journalists and the state.

Despite operating in one of the most tightly controlled media environments in the world, Chinese journalists sometimes take extraordinary risks, braving the perils of job loss or imprisonment to report sensitive stories. As a result, a group of journalists stands at the forefront of some of China’s most dramatic social and political changes. This book is the first to systematically explore why some Chinese journalists decide to challenge Communist Party power holders and the censorship system. Based on 18 months of fieldwork, interviews with over 70 Chinese journalists and academics and analysis of nearly 20,000 Chinese newspaper articles, it investigates the motivation behind news workers who often brave the perils of challenging an authoritarian system. Rather than being driven by commercial pressures or financial inducements, the book suggests that many aggressive journalists push the limits of acceptable coverage because of their sense of public spirit and their professional role orientation. It argues that ultimately, these advocate journalists matter because they challenge specific policies and are changing China, one article at a time. By investigating these path-breaking journalists, the book engages with literature across the social sciences on contentious politics and social movements, political communication, media theory and the sociology of professions. Therefore, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Politics and Media Studies.

Crusading journalists from Sinclair Lewis to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have played a central role in American politics: checking abuses of power, revealing corporate misdeeds, and exposing government corruption. Muckraking journalism is part and parcel of American democracy. But how many people know about the role that muckraking has played around the world? This groundbreaking new book presents the most important examples of world-changing journalism, spanning one hundred years and every continent. Carefully curated by prominent international journalists working in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, Global Muckraking includes Ken Saro-Wiwa’s defense of the Ogoni people in the Niger Δ Horacio Verbitsky's uncovering of the gruesome disappearance of political detainees in Argentina; Gareth Jones’s coverage of the Ukraine famine of 1932–33; missionary newspapers’ coverage of Chinese foot binding in the nineteenth century; Dwarkanath Ganguli’s exposé of the British "coolie" trade in nineteenth-century Assam, India; and many others. Edited by the noted author and journalist Anya Schiffrin, Global Muckraking is a sweeping introduction to international journalism that has galvanized the world’s attention. In an era when human rights are in the spotlight and the fate of newspapers hangs in the balance, here is both a riveting read and a sweeping argument for why the world needs long-form investigative reporting.

The study of Chinese media is a field that is growing and evolving at an exponential rate. Not only are the Chinese media a fascinating subject for analysis in their own right, but they also offer scholars and students a window to observe multi-directional flows of information, culture and communications within the contexts of globalization and regionalization. Moreover, the study of Chinese media provides an invaluable opportunity to test and refine the variety of communications theories that researchers have used to describe, analyse, compare and contrast systems of communications. The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media is a prestigious reference work providing an overview of the study of Chinese media. Gary and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley bring together an interdisciplinary perspective with contributions by an international team of renowned scholars on subjects such as television, journalism and the internet and social media. Locating Chinese media within a regional setting by focusing on ‘Greater China’, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities; the chapters highlight the convergence of media and platforms in the region; and emphasise the multi-directional and trans-national character of media/information flows in East Asia. Contributing to the growing de-westernization of media and communications studies; this handbook is an essential and comprehensive reference work for students of all levels and scholars in the fields of Chinese Studies and Media Studies.

In The Killing Wind, Tan recounts how over the course of 66 days in 1967, over 9,000 Chinese "class enemies" were massacred in the Daoxian.