The Chinese media has been sinking into cynicism.
Overwhelming skepticism has become the accepted news style, and journalists are obsessed with translating stories about the dark side of society into sensationalism. This, combined with the lack of serious journalistic values, is perhaps a sign of coming collapse of the media's creditability.
Since the 1980s, the media has evolved from a mouthpiece for the Party to a denouncer of social ills, against a backdrop of economic liberalization. Journalists used to be sanguine functionaries fed by the government, while now they are employees of rival media corporations.
While censorship still exists, the media industry is running on its own, under the guidance of the invisible hand. It serves to maximize investors' returns by selling information to a public audience.
Journalists in these marketized media, partly independent from the government, are now the primary cheap labor force working in media industry. Their unremarkable income, stressful working conditions, and unpredictable career prospect predispose them to a way of cynicism.
They have a proclivity to complain by revolting in the press. They believe each downside of China's growth is fundamentally unfair and need to be reversed immediately. Their hatred toward the political establishment and system has become a universal principle governing their judgment. Their values have changed from idealism to cynicism or even extremism.
Obviously journalists are rarely satisfied with the positive changes happening to China. They demonstrate this prejudice by stereotyping their news reports and opinions. For example, in their stories the government must be untrustworthy, bureaucratic and prodigal, mega-events must be aimed to flaunt the wealth and serve special interests groups, civil servants must be corrupt, and the Western solution must be perfect.
Although journalists are relatively privileged in the course of China's development, given their above-average income and generally positive reputation, they see the lives of the rich every day.
However the upper classes got their wealth, journalists tend to simplify the development problem into the rip-off of middle class and grass roots, whom they claim to represent.
Their individual feelings of deprivation are believed by them to be suffered by the whole society.
The Internet and conventional media meticulously gather and broadcast negative news. The verdict about our country they offer is ostensibly hopeless.
And it seems that extremism and social unrest, if they appear to be directed against the government, are not condemnable at all.
The industry is at risk of going astray. We have to put this process in the context of China's development, and try to find a way to rectify it.
Journalists are born with curiosity, but curiosity doesn't lead to professionalism. Journalists should be faithfully covering the society rather than stirring it up out of personal sentiments.
However, it is expected that in the foreseeable future, such unprofessional practices will not change much.
Journalists should realize the origin of their unprofessional practices and cynicism - the collapse of the old system that they despise and the establishment of a new order that they have not got used to.
They often use the term "systematic problem" to blame the political system for thorny social problems, and chant the slogan of "universal values" to conceptualize their visceral feelings.
The irony is that it is the changing and decentralizing social system that has caused their anxiety. They would have been far less happy under a system of security and stability.
