I was only able to really briefly touch on the precarious status of some news assistants in foreign media bureaus -- unsung heroes of journalism in China in my opinion. The complicated situation best described here by a former "assistant": radiichina.com/a-former-chine…
Would be interested in hearing about status of local journalists working for foreign media bureaus elsewhere. I heard the situation isn't very good in Iraq, but I'm ignorant about what's happening outside China.
From Yajun in the piece: "Chinese news assistants perform a job that is not well known by the public. Due to language barriers and official hurdles, many correspondents rely on their news assistants for story ideas, finding interviewees, translation and research."
"Assistants are heavily involved in almost every aspect of coverage, but most of the time, their names never appear on the stories..Part of this is bc Chinese nationals are officially prohibited from having bylines in overseas media. Part of it, though, is for their own safety."
"The assistants generally doubt that if the state acts against them, the correspondents or the media companies will be able to do anything to help them. Many news assistants are caught between their employers and the state."
Yajun's story was focused on a particular case so might need to read the context first. @pingroma's story is another excellent piece on the issue, bit more accessible for overseas audiences: qz.com/1094098/why-yo…
From @pingroma: :The risks Chinese assistants face working within the limitations of a repressive government made global headlines in 2015, when a German journalist published a story detailing her assistant’s detention, and her failure to secure the assistant’s release.:
One of the darkest moments for Chinese news assistants happened in 2004, when then NYT researcher Zhao Yan was arrested and charged with leaking state secrets, for his alleged role in reporting Jiang Zemin’s plan to retire from his top military post. Zhao was sentenced 3 years
The two pieces lay out the basics, but there's a lot more ground to cover. There is a lack of consensus about what foreign media companies could do to make workplaces better for Chinese journalist colleagues. FCCC has some baseline suggestions for members: fccchina.org/reporters-guid…
.@LunaLinCN just raised the salary issue. I haven't done a survey, but to give one example of one major news outlet's payment structure, the news assistants made 1/5th of what a foreign correspondent colleague made on his/her first overseas posting.
I stressed that all these elements put news assistants in a very vulnerable position if harassment or assault happens. It's telling that I wasn't able to get any assistants to speak about specific past abuses on the record. foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/18/sex… cc @alecash
One suggestion I'd make to help foster an attitude shift is that even if foreign staff have to use the term "news assistant" in official documents, in the workplace and socially we should avoid this term because it misrepresents the actual journalistic work they do.
It's just also so telling that so many foreign women were able to publicly voice support for the points in my piece, but my Chinese journalist friends had to message me directly to say they agree that they feel like second-class staff in foreign media orgs.
I often bring up these issues in private convos despite the awkwardness people have around things like salary partly bc I look 100% Chinese and therefore have been treated like a news assistant by people who didn't know I am Canadian. It's hard to ignore after experiencing.
For another good piece by @MattSchiavenza, who dubbed news assistants "unsung heroes", read: theatlantic.com/international/…
unroll please (saying please to a bot because I'm Canadian) Also, if anyone else wants to write on these related issues, let me know if I can support you.
