Seeking Truth in International TV News

This book puts CGTN (formerly CCTV-News) and the BBC’s international television news head-to-head, interrogating competing ‘truths’ in the exacting business of news reporting Written by a media scholar and former long-serving BBC News journalist, this book asks if China’s English-language television news programmes are nothing but state propaganda, and if the BBC is a universal news standard to which all other broadcasters should aspire Over eight years of Xi Jinping’s rule, the book investigates how the international TV news channels of CGTN and the BBC reported on Chinese politics, protests in Hong Kong, disasters, China in Africa, and insurgency and its suppression in Xinjiang The comparison reveals uneven editorial imperatives at the Chinese broadcaster and raises questions about the BBC’s professed tenets of balance and impartiality A rigorous analysis of reportage from the two channels, this book will interest scholars of global media, journalism, international relations and public diplomacy It will also interest those in academia, the media and international affairs who want to examine the nature of news and ‘soft power’ in a comparative context