This research will examine United States media coverage of the PeopleÆs Republic of China for the month of April 1999. The research will set forth the context in which media coverage of China has become relevant to an understanding of how American press organizations function and then discuss the amount, placement, point of view, level and kind of bias, and general themes that can be discerned in the coverage given China by newspapers of record.
The visit of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji to the United States in April 1999 provides a contextual hub for examination of China coverage by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Zhu visited the White House and President Clinton on April 8, and in the weeks both before and after the visit both newspapers dealt with U.S.-China relations from a variety of perspectives. The first thing to notice is that visit, though the first of its kind since 1984, was not the sole focus of coverage (ôU.S. Wantsö). In the background of the visit were issues of differences on trade, diplomacy, politics, and even accusations of espionage. Some of the coverage appears to have achieved a high profile on account of ZhuÆs visit, even though the visit was not the focus of coverage: During that time, allegations of Chinese espionage against the U.S. were made that, by the end of April, resulted in the arrest, at the end of April, of a Chinese American scientist employed at the nuclear weapons research laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M. (Drogin A1).
In amount, coverage of China by both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times seems to have increased in scope during ZhuÆs visit. The visit provided a rationale for a variety of stories dealing with contested issue fronts between the U.S. and Chinese governments on one hand, and on the other with what could be called the story behind the story or the editorial positions behind the story. In the week before ZhuÆs arrival, the focus in both papers was on the c...