Down To Business #3: Think-Tank & Conference

Today (Wednesday), our team began as usual with our breakfast and "think-out-loud" meeting to organize our questions for the day. Since there was only one meeting today, this was a lot more relaxed. The hotel kitchen staff even mixed up the menu a bit. The red bean buns were back after a two-morning hiatus. Also, sweet potatoes made a splash of an entrance to our 7:30am buffet.

Media Conference: Session #1
We began the day at a media conference about Crisis Reporting that brought together a lot of Chinese journalists, with a few major heavy-hitter American journalists too. When I say major, I mean major.

...A brief pontification
One think-tank dude began that session with an interesting apology. Though he was not a journalist, he apologized on behalf of the academic community and journalists etc for doing such a poor job questioning the issue of WMD in Iraq. However, as Jasmine-Tea brought up to me, how could journalists be responsible for policy? They did not get us into this mess and they cannot get us out of this mess. They are, as one journalist put it, like gravity - a rather predictable but often inconvenient force in the world.

Some examples:
- Journalists will always cover car bombs, even though terrorists want nothing more than to get press of car bombs and eventhough journalists do not desire to help terrorists...gravity happens.
- Journalists will (only the first time) trust a government that says "I cannot show you the secret evidence, but I promise it is a slam dunk." When armies are ordered overseas, journalists slip even further away from the unattainable goal of being "objective" (whatever that means).

...Closing the brief pontification
The problem the blame and the solutions are with government and with an active public that trusts no one (media or government). Good analysis, courage to change course and leadership are needed to move the USA from being the creator of problems, and the object of blame to being the fabricator of solutions.

Lunch with a One-Man Think Tank
Then...we skipped out on lunch at the Media Conference to go and talk to an amazing one-man think tank, who is a Chinese nonproliferation researcher. This gentleman may have exploded a few of our notions about what the level of trust and cooperation is between the US and China is currently. Tomorrow....in a small roundtable with Chinese experts....we will have the chance to ask more about this key question.

This research is getting really interesting. I cannot wait until our team begins crafting our report together. 12 people....split off to visit New York (United Nations), Beijing, Moscow, Vienna, The Hague, London and Paris and then come together to try to make some sense and policy recommendations about keeping nuclear, biological and chemical goods away from Osama. I love being a policy nerd!

Media Conference Part Two
When we returned to the Media Conference things were really heating up. This time the debates were not between American and Chinese journalists, but were between Chinese journalists among themselves. It was all very civil, but you could tell that the tensions were real and deeply-felt. I do not want to get anyone in trouble...so I will just highlight some themes:

#1) There is a serious battle between those Chinese journalists who say that the nation comes before the individual story and those who say that the public has a right to know about everything from SARS to coal mine explosions throughout their country.

#2) There is disagreement about whether censorship is worse from local governments or central government. Some say that local governments are hated while the central government is perceived as a "rescuer" from the localized oppression (the opposite of US domestic politics where people tend to distrust Washington but like their town council okay). Others disagreed.

#3) Commercialization. This was a debate that sounded very familiar. One guy just said flat-out and unapologetically that most people are not interested in international affairs, only politicians are interested in international affairs, coal mine explosions happen every day....so if given the choice between covering "hard news" or the birth of a child to a famous Chinese actress, he would cover the child birth story.

It was deep.
Toto, we are not in the United States anymore.......
(weak closing, I know...I'm not an op-ed columnist....yet)