Paul Dixon’s PR blog

 Last night 10,000 ‘ordinary’ people gathered in Tiananmen Square to celebrate the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympic Games. That’s according to government mouthpiece, Xinhua news agency. However if you listen to the BBC you will learn it wasn’t exactly a ‘Party in the Park’ atmosphere for the whole family to enjoy – all 10,000 are far from ordinary and were exclusively handpicked by the Chinese government; the average Zhou not even enjoying a distant glimpse of the fireworks through the thick blanket of smog.

However, the real event that took place yesterday and one that really split the media, was not the singing and dancing at Tiananmen, but the current visit by International Olympic Committee President, Jacques Rogge, who is in town to ‘plant trees’ (it’s a green Olympics after all), meet Olympic volunteers, and amongst other activities – answer questions from the media.

Everyone was trying to run in the same lane as Jacques yesterday. And it wasn’t just the old-school media – one particular laowai (foreigner) free Tibet activist camped out in Mr Rogge’s hotel lobby in her hunt for sound-bites of gold-medal proportions. She failed, but that trend wasn’t to continue as the day unfolded. Chinese and Western media both got exactly what they wanted – and both managed to shrug aside the comments that weren’t newsworthy, or in China’s case, could disturb the ‘harmonious’ society warming up for 2008.

In its main story this morning, quoting Mr Rogge, China’s English language newspaper and government mouthpiece – the China Daily – reported: “preparations for Beijing 2008 are truly impressive in every regard”. Dirty air isn’t mentioned directly, however tucked in with the other ‘challenges’ – such as the notorious Beijing habit of spitting with as much frequency as breathing – ‘clean-air’ is apparently not going to be a problem thanks to China’s top weather-control gurus – the newspaper proudly claiming, “Meteorologists began tests last month, firing rockets to disperse rain clouds, a move to guarantee sunshine. They’ve also fired rockets to induce rain to clean the air.” Indeed.

So what did BBC news – blocked by the Great Firewall – get for its dissenting Chinese readers via proxy and of course the rest of the world keen to know what’s really going on – weather rockets aside. The BBC’s headline from yesterday reads: Pollution Risks for Olympic Events. CNN’s: Pollution fears cloud Olympic Gala. And it came straight from the man of the moment, in an interview with CNN Jacques yesterday stated, “Endurance sports like cycling are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed.” This of course set the scene for further discussion on human rights, press freedom, food safety and Tibet – with little room left to discuss the positive remarks he made.

But the fact is, there is truth in both reports: Beijing will be ready to welcome the world for a fantastic Olympic Games – but problems exist, Mr Rogge knows this too, yesterday’s combination of praise combined with a little kick up the back-side through CNN was of course a calculated move. It’s just a shame that both mainstream Chinese and Western Media have headlines to make, rather than reporting a balanced piece of what actually took place.

Two things are for certain: the Chinese media will never print in ink the words ‘postpone’ and ‘delay’. Also, the BBC isn’t going to start being nice to China any time soon; and as for the second, well, a weather rocket guaranteeing clean air and sunny days is the most ludicrous thing I read today, if not this year – any thoughts from the meteorologists out there?