"Coffee and tea reserved for NA deputies and secretaries. No service to the press and guards."
Ảnh: Lê Anh Dũng (VietNamNet)
Ảnh: Lê Anh Dũng (VietNamNet)
A report on
media activities in 2012, which Deputy Minister of Information and
Communication Do Quy Doan delivered at the national conference on the tasks for
the press during 2013, clearly stated, “As
of March 2013, there are 812 printed media agencies nationwide with 1084 publications.
Of these, there are 197 newspapers, including 84 newspapers at national and
industrial level, and 113 provincial ones. In the area of electronic media, there
are 336 social media networks and 1174 diversed news sites. The whole country
has 67 broadcast agencies at national and provincial (local) level; three of
these are central (national) agencies, including the Voice of Vietnam, the
Vietnam Television, and the Vietnam Digital Television (VTC). The other 64
agencies are local broadcasters providing 172 channels (with 99 television
channels and 73 radio ones). In terms of human resources, there are nearly
17,000 professional journalists granted press cards; and the Vietnam
Journalists Association has 17,000 members in its network.”
The language
sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Indeed it remains almost the same through years,
with only a slight change in statistical figures. The press system in 2012, for example, is
described as follows:
“Mass media in general and the press in
particular in present Vietnam has never attained such a growth in terms of the
size, the quantity and the form. As of March 2012, our country has 786 printed
media agencies, including 184 newspapers and over 592 magazines, with 1016
publications. Of these media agencies, there are 194 newspapers, including 81
national and 113 local newspapers; there are 592 magazines, including 475
national and 117 local ones; 1 national news agency; 2 national broadcast
agencies; 1 industrial television agency; 64 provincial broadcast stations; 47
licensed cable broadcasters; 9 providers of cable TV signals. In the area of
electronic meda, the entire nation has 61 electronic newspapers and magazines,
191 social media networks, and over 1000 diversified news sites…”
And below is
the 2011 statistics:
“As of
March 2011, in printed media alone, there are 745 media agencies nationwide
with 1003 publications. In broadcast, there are 67 broadcast agencies. Three of
these are central (national) agencies, including the Voice of Vietnam, the
Vietnam Television and the Vietnam Digital Television. The other 64 agencies
are local broadcasters. They provide 200 domestic channels and 67 overseas
ones. In the area of electronic media, our country has 46 electronic newspapers
and magazines, 287 news sites owned by various media agencies and thousands of
news sites owned by the diverse agencies of the Party, the Government, unions,
associations, organizations, and enterprises. Moreover, as of March 2011, there
are nearly 17,000 citizens granted press cards in our country and more than
5,000 people working as reporters without press cards. Many such reporters and
editors have a good command of political awareness and professional knowledge.”
The above
passage, cited from a statement by the Ministry of Communication and
Information of Vietnam, is typical of official reports issued by the Vietnamese
government which are characterized by an emphasis on numbers and a deliberate
neglect of analysis. The information in the passage is also what the Vietnamese
authorities are likely to provide via mainstream media and the network of
public opinion shapers when they are asked to present evidence supporting the
idea that Vietnam has freedom of the press.
This may be
traced back to a common psychological trait of communists, that is, they are
very fond of numbers and quantification. For instance, they consider them to be
the strongest evidence of the nation’s economic achievements and social
progress. They tend to cite the annual growth in gross domestic products or the
average income per capita in Hanoi as from year X. as “undeniable evidence”
that Vietnam is doing well in development. In the wartime, for the sake of conciseness
in propaganda activities, they even quantified and shortened many terms
unrelated to numbers such as “three sides, four conflicts” to describe the
world’s political situation, “three preparations” to describe three qualities
required from youths and “three responsibilities” to mean the same for women.
One thing to
note, however, is that the Vietnamese government has been using the number of
media agencies and reporters as the clearest and the only evidence of freedom
of the media in Vietnam. They do not go into details of how the media agencies
and reporters work. They also ignore an extremely important aspect of the
story, that is: The vast majority of the media agencies are owned and dominated
by the state in various forms.
Openly giving secret instructions
A standard
feature of communist press such as that of Vietnam is the “guiding role” of the
Party’s Propaganda Department. Every week, this agency holds a meeting in Hanoi
with the editors-in-chief of all major newspapers, in which it provides
feedbacks and rebuke the media for what they have done in the previous week.
The same meeting is held in Ho Chi Minh City by the local Propaganda Department
and things are the same for other provinces and cities across Vietnam.
These
meetings are euphemized by the Party as “weekly discussions with the media.” In
essence, they are meetings in which communist officials sermonize media
leaders, trying to mould newspapers into the Party’s lines and thereby shaping
public opinions.
The Party
must be well aware that this is an unlawful measure which runs counter to all
journalism standards of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality and
fairness. So on one hand, it orders the editors-in-chief to convey the Party’s
editorial directions to journalists at home; on the other hand, it wants the
press to keep extremely secret the fact that the Party maintains media control
with such weekly meetings.
The minutes
of the press guiding meeting of March
29, 2011 was leaked to the blogosphere with instructions such as “don’t report
on movie actress Hong Anh running for national assembly election”, “don’t
mention the jurist doctorate of Cu Huy Ha Vu in his trial” (Vu is a prominent
legal activist who was subsequently sentenced 7 years in prison for conducting
propaganda against the state), “don’t report the vessel sinking in Ha Long so
as not to badly influence the nation’s tourism industry”, “don’t cover issues
related to atomic energy stations in Vietnam”, etc. The leader of the media
agency whose name and signature appeared on the minutes, Vu Quang Huy, and some
concerned staffs were deadly anxious about being imputed.
Just
prior to the trial of Cu Huy Ha Vu, journalists covering legal affairs for
major newspapers all received a printed notice without sender’s name or title
or seal, instructing the media, in reporting the trial, to praise the
impartiality of the judges and the just sentence, “not to give commentaries or
in-depth analyses”, “not to address the accused as J.D. as the accused can take
advantage of his title”, etc.
In
another press guiding meeting last December, Mr. Nguyen The Ky, the Vice
Director of the Central Department of Propaganda, rebuked the press for having
reported that Chinese vessels cut the seismic cables of a Vietnamese oil
exploration ship. He said the Chinese vessels just “unintentionally caused the
cables to be broken” rather than “deliberately sabotaged them”. (In fact
experts, for eg. some working for Petro Vietnam, insisted that China must not
have done anything unintentionally.) Ky’s preach was wired and posted to web,
and he suffered from a public outcry online. Vietnamese BBC, an oversea media
agency, later had an interview with Ky, where he explained that he only meant
to “discuss” this matter with the press. However, he could not mould bloggers
into thinking that the Party puts national interest above their comradeship
with the Chinese communist party or that the Party leaves the press
independent. Both Ky and the Propaganda Department were annoyed with the
leakage of “guidance and propaganda information”. Arguably in the next meeting,
they were extra vigilant over the risk of being recorded, and went short of
searching every attendant for recording devices.
SMS and phone instructions
“The press,
be noticed that tomorrow, July 1, is the Chinese Communist Party’s Establishment
Day. Reporting on anti-China protests and territorial disputes between Vietnam
and China is strictly prohibited.” This text message of June 30, 2012, is just
one of numerous SMS instructions from media control agencies to leaders of
major media agencies.
In addition
to text messages, phone calls and oral instructions have also been used to
order the press “not to report this incidence”, “not to highlight that case”, “to
restrict covering these topics”, etc. This proves to be a wise technique of
controlling the media for its being effective and subtle, leaving no written
form, signature or seal. As there’s not any evidence left of the “guidance”
imposed upon the press, “hostile forces” simply cannot allege that freedom of
the press in Vietnam is restricted – all what they say is slanderous.
More than
anyone else, the Communist Party – herein represented by the propagandists and
public security machinery – is aware of the power of secrecy. Transparency only
means self-defamation and suicide. Thereby arises a risk which the Party keeps
hostile to and vigilant against, that is the sympathy between mainstream media
and unofficial media, or the leakage of information from the “right side” to
the “left side” press (see note), in the words of former Minister of Information and
Communication Le Doan Hop.
(to be continued)
(to be continued)
---
Note: Le Doan Hop, in his office tenure, said in an interview given to the Sai Gon Giai Phong on August 3, 2007, “You the press are absolutely
free if you keep to the right side of the road, and we are making efforts to
keep you, comrades, on the right side.” Possibly from that time on, Hop’s concepts of “right
side” and “left side” in media gave rise to a famous metaphor, “right side
press” to mean state-owned newspapers as opposed to “left side press” to mean “reactionary”,
out-of-state-control blogs.
