But if you look at the different parts of the world, it would be very difficult for the Bush administration to argue that they do not apply same standards to different parts of the world. Clearly US is a great ally of Pakistan and Saudi Arbia, which are not democracies. US has a very complex relations with China, which is not a democracy either by American standard. The issues that were once on the top of that relationship, like human rights, were no longer on the top any more. If you still remember last time when US President talked about human rights in China as a major issue between the two countries, that has been a long time ago. So I think it is true there are different standards applied to different places. In that case You could call that hypocrisy or whatever labels you thought fit most appropriately. But it is clear that the US government's ideas of political development around the world is not applied equally in all places. I am just observing that as I look out how political development in different countries operates around the world.
"I don't think US should be the leader of the world"
Philip Bennett, Managing Editor of Washington Post
-- An Exclusive Interview with the Washington Post Managing Editor Philip Bennett
Washington Post is one of the most important newspapers in the United States and even in the world. The news stories published on the Post appear on Chinese newspapers frequently. How does the newspaper view the image and role of America in the world? How does it perceive China as Chinese people march forcefully toward a market economy? How does the newspaper struggle to maintain the glory of Watergate amid strong resentment from the Bush administration? With these questions in mind, our People's Daily Washington-based correspondent Yong Tang recently conducted an exclusive interview with the newspaper's Managing Editor Philip Bennett.
American Government Image Is Falling down While the Cultural Image still up
Yong Tang: According to the opinion polls, the image of America has been becoming less and less popular in the world today since after the Iraq war. As a top leader of a major American newspaper, how do you think of this growing anti-American sentiment?
Bennett: The world image of US is so clearly linked to its foreign policy and particularly its policy toward Iraq and Middle East, say its support of Israel and its occupation of Iraq.
I was in China once shortly after the missile hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and of course there were demonstrations in Beijing before the US embassy and elsewhere. So I think it is easy to understand in many ways why the US image has decreased.
Another source of the resentment is the perception that Bush administration wants to act unilaterally in the world, outside of alliance that traditionally governed the ways Bush made foreign policy decisions. In some ways the core of perception problems is centered on 911 terrorist attacks in 2001 in which the US government and Bush administration reacted by deciding that the country would make decisions in foreign affairs that respond only to US interests. They were not going to consult very widely, and not to compromise in making those decisions. That caused rift even among the US allies. So it is natural to see that the image of America is the lowest in public opinion.
But it is important for Chinese to understand that the image of America is many things, not just the image of the government. American culture, as expressed in Movies and music etc, is still quite popular in the world today. American movies are remarkably popular all over the world to the extent that you can buy them on the streets of all major Chinese cities. People don't t stop seeing US movies or buying US music just because they are unhappy with the Bush administration. And the Internet is a US -centric device that has made English much more influential in the world. So I think there is a complicated set of forces working there. To see just in black and white way misses some of that broader picture.
I don't Think US should be the Leader of the World
Yong Tang: The Bush administration always claims that it is spreading freedom and democracy to all over the world. But there is widespread suspicion over the motives of What the Bush administration is doing. Some experts say democracy is just a beautiful pretext for America to seek its own interests. So personally I think there is a kind of hypocrisy here.
Bennett: The Bush administration believes that there isn't a contradiction between defending its self-interest and promoting friendly and democratic regimes. Because they believe that promoting those kinds of governments would make the world more friendly to the US and therefore it is in the interest of America to do that.
But if you look at the different parts of the world, it would be very difficult for the Bush administration to argue that they do not apply same standards to different parts of the world. Clearly US is a great ally of Pakistan and Saudi Arbia, which are not democracies. US has a very complex relations with China, which is not a democracy either by American standard. The issues that were once on the top of that relationship, like human rights, were no longer on the top any more. If you still remember last time when US President talked about human rights in China as a major issue between the two countries, that has been a long time ago. So I think it is true there are different standards applied to different places. In that case You could call that hypocrisy or whatever labels you thought fit most appropriately. But it is clear that the US government's ideas of political development around the world is not applied equally in all places. I am just observing that as I look out how political development in different countries operates around the world.
Yong Tang: Since the standard is not applied equally in the world, it is damaging Bush's effort to promote the so -called democracy, isn't it?
Bennett: It depends upon what you are trying to achieve. I guess the question I would ask is: if you look around the world in strategically important places, is the US actively engaged there promoting democracy or not? I don't think there is much evidence that promoting democracy is what the US is doing. It is what it says it is doing.
You were here in Washington DC During the Bush's inaugural ceremony this year. During the speech Bush said quite forcefully that spreading freedom is the No. One issue for his second term. Then a day after that he backed off from that statement. He said that spreading freedom is just a long term goal, not an immediate goal of policy. So I think there is still realism that is applied to different relations.
The ideologues in the Bush administration are very influential in decisions made toward Iraq and other provocative moves by the administration. But still there is a level of pragmatism that plays a role in the Bush administration's decisions. For example, The US relations with China today is on a very pragmatic footing right now.
Yong Tang: In such sense, do you think America should be the leader of the world?
Bennett: No, I don't think US should be the leader of the world. My job is helping my readers trying to understand what is happening now. What is happening now is very difficult to understand. The world is very complex. There are various complex forces occurring in it. I don't think you can imagine a world where one country or one group of people could lead everybody else. I can't imagine that could happen. I also think it is unhealthy to have one country as the leader of the world. People in other countries don't want to be led by foreign countries. They may want to have good relations with it or they may want to share with what is good in that country.
That is also a sort of colonial question. The world has gone through colonialism and imperialism. We have seen the danger and shortcomings of those systems. If we are heading into another period of imperialism where the US thinks itself as the leader of the area and its interest should prevail over all other interests of its neighbors and others, then I think the world will be in an unhappy period.
Yong Tang: So the world order should be democratic?
Bennett: Democracy means many things. How do you define democracy? As a Chinese journalist, you may have your own definition of democracy which corresponds to your history and your way of seeing the world. I may have another definition. Someone else may have their own definitions. Democracy means a lot of different things.
Let me give an example. Democracy in one sense means the majority decides, but it also means the rights of the minority are protected. As UK late Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, democracy is the least bad system that we have ever thught of. So democracy is never perfect. It always has problems. Our democracy here in the US has many contradictions, problems and challenges. So democracy is not a cure that could turn everything bad into good. It has its own advantages and its disadvantages.
We are not as aggressive as we should be
Yong Tang: How do you think of the roles American mainstream media play in American foreign policy?
Bennett: We have a little bit different roles in newspapers compared with our counterparts in Europe and other countries. We don't have any political point of view that we are trying to advance. We don't represent any political parties. We are not tied to any political movement. On the news side of the paper we try not to give opinions. So I think the role the Washington Post should play is to hold the government accountable for decisions made by it.
This goes to foreign policy as well. For example, the Washington Post has a correspondent bureau in Baghdad. One of the jobs of our correspondents in Baghdad is to tell our readers what the Bush administration is trying to hide. Bush says democracy is advancing in Iraq, but our correspondents say the situation there is much more complex than that. Our job is to put that in the public domain and challenge the government and hold them accountable. We do that by having independent reporting about events, by telling our readers what the actual situation is, with as much independence, fairness and accuracy as we can.
Often that is in conflict with the government. That is why we are having a lot of pressure from the government, though not in the materials ways. We receive a lot of criticism from the government for presenting views of events which are in odds with what they are trying to present. This is very important in our system and it is one of the fundemental roles of the press.
We have seen that similar roles of the press are developing in China as media expose corruption. In any system corrupt officials are trying to cover bad things up. We may look at the press coverage of issues like SARS epidemic. At the very beginning there were efforts to cover things up. But then the news came out everywhere through the press and even the textmessaging. Then the government was forced to admit what happened. This role is quite similar with the role we are trying to play here in the United States.
Of course, we have a lot of limitations on our ability to do that. The government of the US is becoming much more secretive, much more hostile to the press in terms of giving us access to the information. So a lot of what we do here is to fight for access to the information that we think the public should have. That takes a lot of our energy and resources.
Yong Tang: Is that partly because of 9.11?
Bennett: It is true that in the areas of national security many more things are becoming secrets since after 911. So it is a big thing for the Washington Post to be the first major newspaper in America to publish the pictures about the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prisoners abuse scandal. To get those pictures is extremely difficult. The government was very angry with us for publishing that story and making that story a big deal. So our reporters are trained, encouraged and supported in going out and finding things that the government is trying to hide from the public. That is a lot of what we do.
Yong Tang: But my sense is that the Washington Post is not as aggressive as it was. One example is also about the coverage of the Iraq war. Before the war started, the Post published a lot of stories saying that Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destructions(WMD). Of course this claim was found to be wrong. Late last year Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. even apologized that the Post should have published more stories from the opposite side.
Bennett: Again I think it is very important to go back to the division between the editorial side and news side of our newspaper. Our editorial page expressed opinions in favor of the war in Iraq. That has no influence on the news gathering part of the newspaper.
Where the news gathering part of the Post failed was to be sufficiently skeptical about the administration's claims that there are weapons of mass destructions in Iraq. We never reported that there were weapons of mass destructions in Iraq. We just repeated what the government said and we did not dig hard enough to challenge those statements. That was what Downie apologized for.
As you said, we are not aggressive enough in challenging and testing the statements the government is making. For me, this episode is a good example of how difficult it is to independently verify the government's claims when the government is lying to you. The newspaper is incapable of going to Iraq and find out for itself whether it has WMD or not. The closest that we may come is to report very closely on the UN's effort to determine if the regime has WMD in Iraq. But in the run-up to the war in Iraq, the UN is very close to US administration's view that there was a high probability that Iraq has WMD. We have reported that too.
This is an example of how difficult it is to get the truth on these types of subjects. If George W Bush came out tomorrow and say Iran has nuclear weapons, we would have to report that too. We have no independent means to verify the accuracy of the statement TODAY. As the time goes on, we are able to do some reporting to show how accurate that statement is. In gengeral we are in a difficult period to report on national security issues.
In other ways the Post is still very aggressive. You may read about a story of the insurgents in Iraq last week. It is very prominently placed on our newspaper and we did it very aggressively, trying to tell the inside of Iraq as much as we can. In some areas we have done better and in some other areas we have not done as well as we could. Everyone learns some lessons from the prewar coverage of Iraq. We learned that we are not as aggressive as we should be.
Yong Tang: Having learnt some lessons in Iraq, the Washington Post would not repeat the same mistakes in Iran, wouldn't it?
Bennett: Because the news stories come out everyday we always make mistakes. But we are more mindful now and more aware of where we didn't do as well as we should have. One of the biggest mistakes a journalist could make is to think he knows what is going to happen. We could also make mistakes by driving direct analogy between Iran and Iraq and to say what is going to happen in Iran is the same thing in Iraq. Iran is not Iraq.
American mainstream media is out of touch with their mainstream readers in some areas
Yong Tang: It seems that the influence of mainstream media in America is on the decline. One example is about the general elections last year. The Washington Post and almost all the other major newspapers in the country firmly sided with Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry but finally Bush still won the reelection by a wide margin.
Bennett: Yes, the influence of the mainstream media is on the decline, but I don't think it is because of the reasons you said. Again it goes back to what an editorial policy of a newspaper is. Major American newspapers endorse Democratic candidates every time. I think that endorsement means nothing. I don't think people will vote according to that endorsement. It is just an old tradition which really doesn't have lot of meaning any more today.
Yong Tang: Why are most American major newspapers in favor of Democratic?
Bennett: Most big, metropolitan and urban newspapers were built in a strong Democratic tradition because they came from urban environment and traditionally voted for Democratic. So they tend to, on the editorial side, support Democratic views.
Why is the influence of the mainstream media waning? It is because there are so many sources of different news and information today. The Internet has made it possible for people to get news from online. Newspapers like the Washington Post have no longer monopoly on news and information. Even our readers spend a lot of time reading Internet, reaching different sites and comparing different news. That has made the influence of newspapers go down.
Yong Tang: Does it mean that American mainstream media no longer represent mainstream views?
Bennett: I think there will be some people on the right and conservatives who say that. In their eyes the mainstream media is too liberal while the whole country tends to be more and more conservative. Today American people are more conservative, nationalistic and religious and more closed off to foreign influence than the media. By and large, American mainstream media has been slow to appreciate how important the religion is in America. We don't cover it very deeply and extensively. So I think there are areas we are out of touch.
Furthermore, there is a mood of great suspicion about the media. Every time when we publish a story about Iraq that suggests the war is not going well for America, I get lots of messages from people saying that we the Post are not patriotic and we are reporting negatively on the war only because of our political bias against the Bush administration. I think there is a perception among some of our readers that we are hostile to the Bush administration or representing our own political point of view in our news coverage. I think it is impossible to make that perception go away. Over the time it could damage the reputation of a newspaper.
Despite that disenchantment from the readers, even if the newspaper may fall out of favor with many readers because of the decisions we make, it doesn't change the way we do journalism. We certainly will not suppress the negative news about the government even if people will feel more negative about us. We believe that doing what we should do is journalism. Of course, there is a risk a newspaper should take in doing this way.
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