This week on the Sinica Podcast, Jeremy and I chat with Mike Chinoy, the legendary award-winning TV newsman who helmed CNN in Beijing for many critical years. Mike talks about the video documentary series and accompanying book Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic, for which he interviewed about 130 journalists whose careers spanned an 80-year period, from the 1940s to the present.

04:08 – The genesis of the Assignment China project

11:15 – Editorial decisions: What was included, and what wasn’t

16:13 – The big takeaways for Mike on finishing this project

25:13 – The role of contingency and the observer effect

32:52 – How Tiananmen really made CNN and changed the future of cable news

36:30 – Tough ethical calls in the reporting of China

42:42 – Structural biases in American reporting on China…

50:50 – …and what news consumers can do to adjust for those baked-in biases

52:54 – Does where the reporters are actually determine what the story is?

1:02:17 – What went wrong with TV news?

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Mike: Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai by Matti Friedman

Jeremy: From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories by Fradl Shtok, translated by Jordan Finkin and Allison Schachter

Kaiser: Father's Laszlo Ladany's "Ten Commandments" on China-watching, and playing around with ChatGPT 4

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Legendary CNN reporter Mike Chinoy on his book and documentary series "Assignment China"

Sinica Podcast