Investigative Journalism, Environmental Problems and Modernisation in China [Hardcover]

This book examines how the news media in general, and investigative journalism in particular, interprets environmental problems and how those interpretations contribute to the shaping of a discourse of risk that can compete against the omnipresent and hegemonic discourse of modernisation in Chinese society.Introduction 1. Modernisation, Environmental Problems and Chinese Society 2. Twenty-years of Environmental Investigative Reporting: Agendas, Social Interests and Voices 3. The Discourse of Risk: Environmental Problems and Environmentalism in Chinese Press Investigative Reports 4. Environmental Investigative Journalists and their Work 5. Offline Investigative Journalism and Online Environmental Crusades 6. Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony: Investigative Journalism between Modernisation and Environmental Problems Bibliography

'The environmental disasters that have accompanied China's rapid economic growth are increasingly well known internationally, but the extent to which they are contested by investigative journalists and an emergent civil society are much less studied. Dr Tong has done us a great service in showing how resourceful and courageous reporters have managed to expose the links between corrupt local officials, corner-cutting Chinese entrepreneurs and profit-hungry multinational corporations that have led to many of the worst cases of environmental degradation. Although they have often operated in a space opened by the central government's desire to curb the pollution that threatens to make the very air of China unbreathable, Dr Tong mounts a persuasive case that these journalists have gone beyond simply criticizing the effects of the hectic dash for industrial development. She argues that they have been instrumental in developing a counter-hegemonic ideology of environmental responsibility that challenges the core of the party's current ideology. Her work will be of enormous value to all those interested in China, in the media, and in the global crlÃ(