Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories: Schramm, Altschull, and China

Journal of Communication, September 2003 Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories: Schramm, Altschull, and China By Chengju Huang Wilbur Schramm’s “Soviet” communist model and J. Herbert Altschull’s “Marxist” approach have been widely used as general theoretical frameworks to examine press systems in the Marxist world in general and China in particular. Though a growing literature suggested significant changes in Chinese journalism in the past 2 decades, very few studies have sent a direct challenge to the 2 models’ theoretical wisdom through the Chinese case. This article finds neither of the 2 models is sufficient in conceptualizing the Chinese case because of Chinese news media’s transitional nature and the 2 models’ inner theoretical flaws as normative press theories. Furthermore, realizing the growing conflict between normative media theories and accelerated post-Cold War global media transformation, the author suggests using a transitional media approach to revisit the traditional normative media approach and calls for a more systematic study of the transitional phenomenon of global media systems. For decades, Wilbur Schramm’s “Soviet Communist Theory of the Press” (Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1956, pp. 105–146) was widely used as the general theoretical framework to examine press systems in the communist world in general and China in particular (e.g., Hachten, 1987; Merrill, 1974, p. 35; Merrill & Lowenstein, 1971, pp. 182–184; Merrill & Odell, 1983, pp. 159–160; Rivers & Schramm, 1969, pp. 40–45). Criticizing the Schramm schema as ideologically biased, J. Herbert Altschull (1984) attempted to reconceptualize the world’s “Marxist” press. By the early and middle 1990s, while a growing literature from students of Chinese political economy suggested China had largely transformed itself from communism into postcommunist neoauthoritarianism under some form of market economy (e.g., Baum, 1994; Pei, 1994; White, 1993; Y. S. Wu, 1994), some Western communication scholars continued to put Chinese journalism into Schramm’s Soviet model or Altschull’s Marxist approach. In Global Journalism: Survey of International Communication, edited by John C. Merrill (1995), a widely used text in Western journalism schools, Lambeth (1995) explicitly put China (together with Chengju Huang is a postdoctoral fellow in journalism and media studies at Central Queensland University, Australia. Copyright © 2003 International Communication Association 444 Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories Cuba and North Korea) into Schramm’s “communist” model (p. 5), and he believed China still kept Soviet-style communist press systems “intact” (p. 13; see also Chaudhary & Chen, 1995). Meanwhile, Altschull (1995, pp. 240, 251) insisted China was still a Marxist country. Indeed, since the early 1990s, many empirical studies have revealed significant changes in post-Mao Chinese journalism (e.g., Chang, Chen, & Zhang, 1993; Chu, 1994; Huang, 1994; Lee, 1994, 2000; Zhao, 1998). However, whether or not those changes are significant enough to question the adequacy of Schramm’s Soviet theory and Altschull’s Marxist approach in conceptualizing post-Mao Chinese journalism remains largely unanswered.1 Very few have directly challenged the two models’ theoretical wisdom through the Chinese case. Unsatisfied with this situation, I developed this article to argue that neither of the two models is sufficient in conceptualizing the Chinese case because of Chinese news media’s transitional nature and the two models’ inner theoretical flaws as normative press theories. Furthermore, realizing the growing conflict between normative media theories and accelerated post-Cold War global media transformation, I call for further study of the transitional phenomenon of global media systems. The Schramm Schema and China The central thesis of Schramm’s 1956 essay is quite simple: The Soviet communist mass media were antiprofessional and anticommercial as they were used instrumentally by the communist party state for various political purposes, particularly as propaganda tools. As an integral part of the “four theories” myth, the Schramm schema has had lasting impact on Western communication scholarship. As Lowenstein and Merrill (1990) noted, Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al., 1956; Four Theories hereafter): has become standard reading in journalism departments and schools and has implanted the “four theories” concept rather firmly in the minds of journalism students, faculty, and practitioners. Almost every article and book dealing with philosophical bases for journalism has alluded to this book, commented on it, or quoted from it. It has definitely made an impact. (p. 163) According to the University of Illinois Press (Nerone, 1995, back cover), since its publication in 1956, Four Theories had remained the best-selling nonfiction book published by the press, with some 80,000 copies sold by the mid-1990s. In the Chinese journalism community, Schramm has been described as the “father of 1 For example, Chang et al. (1993) have argued that the “mass propaganda” model used by some Western scholars to examine Mao’s media has no longer been adequate in addressing changes in postMao Chinese press. This argument, however, does not necessarily or automatically imply the Schramm schema’s insufficiency in the Chinese context. This is not only because Schramm’s Soviet model is more popular and influential than the mass propaganda model, but also because Schramm’s discussion of Soviet media covered broader issues on communist media systems. 445 Journal of Communication, September 2003 communication study” (Li, 1993, p. 34) and remains a popular figure. In May 1982, Schramm visited China. In Shanghai and Beijing he introduced communication study to Chinese journalism researchers and students for whom communication study was still a brand new “science.” After long suffering from Mao’s totalitarian communist press approach and isolation from the international journalism community, China’s reformist journalists and young journalism students were rightly hungry to learn from Western liberal democracy and press freedom. Schramm’s visit to China was short, but his legacy was indelible. Together with Four Theories, which was published in Chinese soon after Schramm’s visit, as a whole, his “Soviet theory,” meeting virtually no serious academic critique, has been highly and widely recognized by its Chinese readers. It is true that for Schramm, who died in 1987, history gave him little chance to watch significant social and media changes in China since the mid-1980s. It is true as well that even before Schramm died, Deng Xiaoping’s post-Cultural Revolution reforms since the late 1970s had already led to some noticeable and significant changes in the news media, as noted by other Western scholars. As early as 1981, for example, Robinson (1981) noted the “striking” (p. 72) contrast of Chinese news media in the Mao era and the post-Mao era. She found that aiming at “furthering new economic and political priorities,” the functions of the news media in China “have been expanded to include advertising, entertainment, and coverage of news which is decidedly more Western in approach” (p. 58) and the media even “criticize the daily workings of government” (p. 63). Luter and Richstad (1983, p. 179) also noted “a remarkably different press has emerged from . . . change in [China’s] political direction and press philosophy.” In the meantime, Schramm continued to put the Chinese case into his Soviet model (e.g., Schramm & Porter, 1982, p. 153). It is not my intention to “cavil” Schramm too much, despite his insensitivity to changes in the post-Mao Chinese press, as major social and media changes in China occurred after he was gone. Instead, my greater critical concern is the visible or invisible impact of the legacy left by his 1956 essay on many Western scholars’ understanding of current Chinese journalism. Challenging the conventional wisdom of those who continue to put China into Schramm’s Soviet communist press model, I argue that the Schramm schema is significantly insufficient in conceptualizing the Chinese case in the following four key aspects. Multifunctions press vs. “single purpose” press. In his 1956 essay, Schramm wrote: The communication system and all other systems of the Soviet state had only “a single purpose” and “they are all saying the same thing,” namely, to serve party and state policies (Siebert et al., 1956, p. 122). The consequences of such a single purpose communication included “a great deal of sameness about the content of Soviet media on any day”; the replacement of “our own [Western media’s] function of news gathering and news writing” by looking at events from “the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist standpoint”; and the lack of advertising, timely news, and human interest stories in Soviet presses. Even Soviet broadcasting was “deadly serious broadcasting, missionary broadcasting” (pp. 123, 124, 133, 134, 136, & 137). Although Schramm’s description of the Soviet press was basically suitable to 446 Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories Mao’s Chinese press as well (e.g., see Chang, 1989; Huang, 2002; Lu, 1980; Sun, 1986; Yu, 1988), it would be news in itself if one believed it is an accurate picture of post-Mao Chinese journalistic practices. As shown in the existing literature, the past decades have witnessed diversification of media structure, expansion of media function, and comprehensive media commercialization in China (e.g., Chan, 1993; Chu, 1994; Huang, 2001; Lee, 1994, 2000; To, 1998; Yu, 1994; Zhao, 1998). As previously discussed, as early as the early 1980s some Western scholars observed that Chinese news media were beginning to break from the single purpose communication model described by Schramm. In a 1985 published textbook widely used in Chinese journalism schools, leading Chinese media scholars urged the news media to expand their function from propagating to providing news, general information, knowledge, and entertainment, expressing public opinions, and criticizing the daily working of government and the wrongdoing of officials. They also called for introducing capitalist management into the country’s state-owned news media, maintaining “the pursuit of profit” was a common and universally recognized media function (Journalism Department of Fudan University, 1985, pp. 138–143, 224–239). The 1990s witnessed Chinese news media’s comprehensive commercialization as a result of Deng’s call for further reform and opening in 1992 and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) formal embrace of the “socialist market economy” formula in its 14th national congress held in October of that year. In the newspaper sector, for example, while many new established news outlets were originally designed as reader-oriented presses (Huang, 2000, 2001), even traditional party newspapers have been becoming increasingly reader-oriented by increasing their coverage of news, entertainment, and commercial advertisements and publishing commercialized subsidiary press chains (Xie, 1997; Yu, 1994; Zhao, 1998). In short, after more than 2 decades of reforms, Chinese journalism has now been largely transformed into a multistructured media industry with multiple functions rather than pure propaganda tools.2 Certainly, official propaganda still visibly and firmly remains in most party organs’ daily practices, but propaganda itself has been significantly changed in terms of its content and method. Although the news media in the Mao era were rather narrowly used to serve Mao’s class struggle and mass political-economic campaigns, propaganda in postMao Chinese media has been required to serve the country’s “reform and opening” policy with a more rational and pragmatic manner (Huang, 2002). Accordingly, things previously belonging to “our own” alone in Schramm’s eyes, such as news competition, commercial advertising, human-interest stories, and even sensational tabloids containing sex and violence, are now widely shared by “our” Chinese “communist” counterparts. Instead of being “deadly serious” and propaganda-oriented, many Chinese media have been criticized as oversensational and money driven (Zhao, 1998). Relaxed media control in China. The Soviet communist press described by Schramm was a tightly and completely controlled political and ideological system, 2 For a brief but very useful description of Chinese communist journalism history, see Zhao (1998, chaps. 1 & 2). 447 Journal of Communication, September 2003 which perhaps can be called a “sardine-can” model. In Schramm’s words, the Soviet mass media “are ‘kept’ instruments, and they follow humbly and nimbly the gyrations of the party line and the state directives” (Siebert et al., 1956, p. 122). A similar high-handed media control system also existed in the Soviet’s satellite states in Eastern Europe (Buzek, 1964; Lendvai, 1981) and Mao’s China (Chang, 1989; Huang, 2002; Lu, 1980; Sun, 1986; Yu, 1988). In contrast to this, post-Mao China has been moving away from such an orthodox communist media control system and approaching a more flexible media regulation pattern as a result of significant changes in Chinese politics in general. Since the early 1990s, a growing literature has been calling for rethinking China’s new communism under Deng. Some even questioned whether China was still a communist state in the traditional sense at all. Shirk (1993), for example, found the Chinese communist institutions under Deng to be surprisingly flexible and innovative and “real bargaining took place and politics were received or abandoned” during tremendous work conferences (p. 113). Impressed with the “extraordinary” changes in Chinese economy during his visit to China in 1995, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also believed that something in Chinese politics must have happened. He described China as “a strange political system right now. It’s a one-party state but the party itself is abandoning its original ideology” (“The world according to Kissinger,” 1995). Pei’s work (1994) further argued that the Stalinist-Maoist “communist” China that remained in many people’s minds had actually largely been transformed into a “postcommunist neoauthoritarian” country (pp. 7, 20): “The three pillars of orthodox communism in China and Vietnam—the Party-state, a planned economy, and communist ideology—have been made hollow” by the technocratization of the state at the expense of the Communist Party, the transformation of a planned economy into a market one, and the decline of orthodox communist ideology (pp. 2–3). Similarly, Cui (1994) noted that although China’s neoauthoritarian political system had little to do with aggregation via voting, it had developed “deliberative democracy” and made it “an integral part of [the] Chinese system” (p. 19). He also observed: “There seems to be a tendency for substantive bargaining and arguing to spill over and consolidate eventually into formal democratic institutional procedures,” as shown in the country’s democratic experiment with local elections since 1988 (p. 20). Within journalism, the past decades witnessed the relaxation of media control as the CCP decided to shift its central work from Mao’s class struggle to economic construction and no longer regarded the news media as pure political-ideological propaganda tools. A relaxed media control policy has also resulted from the news media’s increasing marketization and financial independence from the government (Liang, 1992, 1999; Liu, 1998). These significant philosophical and policy changes have made a Stalinist-Maoist overall, direct, and concrete control on the news media neither necessary nor possible. Instead, the news media have now been jointly ruled by both the “visible hand” of the party state and the “invisible hand” of the market. Media control is always there, but the means, extent, and strategy of control have changed. According to a senior editor of the Beijing-based Economic Daily, “For today’s Chinese news media, except for some important or sensitive political and policy issues such as the independent movements in Tai448 Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories wan and Tibet, foreign policy, and open criticisms of Chinese leadership and their major socio-economic policies, control on other issues has largely disappeared.”3 Wu (1997) also believed that the CCP’s media control policy was in the transition from a microcontrol model to a more relaxed and flexible macrocontrol pattern. Consequently, the news media enjoyed a relatively freer media environment. Even within People’s Daily, mouthpiece of the CCP Central Committee, control from the central authorities over the newspaper’s editorial policy had relaxed (G. G. Wu, 1994). 4 Positive instrumental use of media in post-Mao China. Under the heading “The Soviet Concept and Our Own,” Schramm wrote: [I]n the Soviet Union mass communication is essentially an instrument to be played upon, by direction of a few Promethean leaders, for a preset result. In our system, mass communication is a service rather than an instrument, and is used—not for preconceived ends—but rather as the voice of social and public needs, interests, tastes, and ideas, as observed and interpreted by the owners and managers of the media, for the purpose of selling a useful product. (Siebert et al., 1956, p. 146) Significantly, Schramm’s argument not only ignored that “media under libertarian and social responsibility theories also are instrumentalized—not by the state but rather by private capital” (Nerone, 1995, p. 29), but also left little room for any— logically and historically—possible positive social function of a communist or socialist press. China has remained the world’s fastest growing economy since the late 1970s, and its socioeconomic progress has been widely recognized (e.g., “China looming,” 1996). One must bear in mind, though, that this progress was achieved under the leadership of the communist government, including its active, “instrumental” use of the country’s media resources to serve constructive educational, developmental, and political goals (Huang, 2002). This has made Chinese journalism closer to the “developmental concept” of the press as described by Hachten (1987) rather than to the communist model. However, for an apparent ideological reason, communist states have long been kept out of the door of developmental communication. For example, by the mid-1980s, when the developmental nature of post-Mao China’s media and social reforms had become rather clear based on Hachten’s (1987, p. 32) theory, Hachten himself, arguably the first one who formally advanced the developmental concept of the press, characterized the Chinese case this way: 3 Confidential interview, Beijing, October 28, 1998. 4 G. G. Wu (1994) has described the change as “The ‘pouring’ pattern is giving way gradually to the ‘birdcage’ and now even to the ‘kite flying’ method of editing” (p. 208). According to Wu, the “pouring” pattern indicates a top-down information flow, namely, Chinese leaders and ideologues formulate the ideas and “pour” them down to the brains of the newspaper’s commentators. Within the “birdcage,” commentators can select among ideas from the speeches, directives, and documents of the central leadership, just as birds flying within a cage. Using the “kite flying” method, a commentator is allowed to select an editorial topic. The topic, like a kite, can fly in the sky, a much larger space than a cage, with just a string in the hands of the party (pp. 199-–204). 449 Journal of Communication, September 2003 The reforms in Chinese society undertaken by Deng Xiaoping have brought such marked changes in the media as increased use of advertising, more entertainment features, and Western-style news stories. However, the basic function of mass communication in China remains the same—to support the policies and goals of the Party leadership. (p. 25) Hachten’s argument was only half true, because he not only failed to realize significant changes in the Party’s policies and goals themselves, but also overlooked the emerging trend of media commercialization in China. Many years later, he began to recognize that China “seems to have something in common with corporate capitalism or neo-authoritarianism of its Asian neighbors.” However, he still refused to refer directly to the country as a developmental case because he believed China, like North Korea and Cuba, still to be a “police” state (Hachten, 1999, p. 34). Hachten’s comments seem to illustrate the difficulty for many Western scholars to restructure their theoretical frameworks to understand China’s changing social and media context. Hachten was wrong to characterize China as a police state. Like Lambeth (1995, p. 5), his equation of China to Cuba and North Korea was also questionable. Market socialism vs. state socialism. The research objective of Schramm’s 1956 essay was the Soviet press based on a centralized command economy or state socialism (state ownership and control) where “the profit motive [of the press] has been removed” (Siebert et al., 1956, p. 5). In contrast, post-Mao China’s media reforms have so far followed a market socialism model (state-owned but marketoriented).5 This has rendered the Schramm schema virtually powerless in analyzing China’s ongoing media commercialization. For example, how will the Schramm schema fit the sharp rise of “China’s state-run tabloids”—the highly commercialized daily “city newspapers” established by the CCP’s provincial Party press organs (Huang, 2001), the development of the country’s semi-independent press (Huang, 2000), the phenomenon of press annexation and conglomeration (Liu, 1998), the marketization of some party press organs such as the Guangzhou Daily (Xie, 1997), the end of government subsidy to the news media (Liang, 1999), press competition (Yu, 1994; Zhao, 1998), the practice of diverse business ventures by the news media (Cheng, 1997), and the strong growth of the country’s advertising industry (Chinese Advertising United Company & Chinese Advertising Association, 1996)? In short, it can be argued that together with the demise of communism in China (Pei, 1994), the orthodox communist media approach as described by Schramm— which featured a strong propaganda orientation, poor professional performance, and anticommercialism—has largely been buried in China. As a result, attempting to fit current Chinese journalism under postcommunist neoauthoritarianism and market socialism into a communist model generalized from Schramm’s 1956 essay, or vice versa, would be surely like “fitting the proverbial square peg into a round hole” (Merrill & Lowenstein, 1971, p. 185). It must be pointed out that Schramm schema’s insufficiency in conceptualizing the Chinese case is due not only to significant changes in Chinese journalism, but 5 For a general discussion of “state socialism” and “market socialism,” see Y. S. Wu (1994). 450 Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories also to its internal theoretical flaws. Some have criticized Four Theories as very general media typologies that lack flexibility (e.g., Merrill & Lowenstein, 1971, p. 186; Robinson, 1977, p. 118). Others have criticized the book’s intention to present a “timeless structure of idea” by confusing history with theory (Nerone, 1995, pp. 16, 17). It has also been criticized as culturally and ideologically biased because it defined the four theories from within one of them, classical liberalism, and left no room for alternative ideas and practices (Nerone, 1995). Whereas these criticisms of the four theories in general are important and valuable, to date little concern has been paid particularly to Schramm’s and many others’ generalization of his Soviet model into a universal Marxist communist press theory. Carefully reading Schramm’s “Soviet Communist Theory of the Press,” one would have little difficulty in finding that the essay, as its title suggested, was originally largely a case study of Soviet media in the 1950s, or in other words a Stalinist Soviet communist media approach. However, this original Soviet model was later widely and almost naturally treated or expanded by Schramm himself and Western communication scholarship in general as a universal Marxist communist press model by providing virtually no substantial theoretical demonstration and empirical evidence.6 This is a logical problem, but one such problem is too much for a “theory.” Because the Stalinist Soviet press approach was neither the only nor final model of socialist or Marxist media, to generalize it as a Marxist communist press theory thus took the risk of equating Marxist communism as a significant critique of capitalism to Stalinism. As Nerone (1995, p. 125) argued, in Schramm’s essay, Marxism “is conflated with Stalinism then dismissed as cancerous exaggeration of authoritarianism.” Likewise, the Schramm schema as a universal communist press model lacks a cultural specificity and an ability to conceptualize variations and complexities of the world’s socialist media systems, in both time and space, within its homogenizing and monolithic framework. This suggests it is a useful but not adequate framework for one’s understanding of mass communication in communist societies. Soon after the publication of Four Theories in 1956, for example, the universality of Schramm’s Soviet theory met challenges from Tito’s Yugoslav press, as well documented by Robinson (1977). Criticizing Four Theories as a description of “very general, abstract role types” (p. 118), Robinson argued that media reforms in Yugoslavia since the late 1950s had made the Yugoslav press function rather different from the Soviet model as described by Schramm in some important ways.7 This had made the Yugoslav case neither a variant of the Soviet model nor a Western pattern, but a new form of media organization in Yugoslavia’s self6 In 1969, at the latest, Schramm and his coauthor Rivers (1969, pp. 40–45) began to interchange concepts such as “Soviet communist theory” and “communist theory,” and “Soviet leaders” and “communists.” Many others soon followed suit (e.g., Hachten, 1987, pp. 23–27; Lowenstein & Merrill, 1990, p. 165; Merrill, 1974, p. 35; Merrill & Lowenstein, 1971, pp. 182–184; Merrill & Odell, 1983, pp. 159–160). It is noteworthy that, although Schramm himself intended to expand his “Soviet” theory into a general “Communist” model, he expressed no concern about other researchers’ similar actions. 7 For example, Yugoslavia’s financial and operational media autonomy guaranteed freedom of speech and the citizen’s right to know; its ability to supply comprehensive social information; and its role as public forum, critic of negative phenomena in society, and social educator spreading elementary knowledge for following and understanding the socioeconomic process (Robinson, 1977, pp. 118–122). 451 Journal of Communication, September 2003 governing socialism (p. 119). In Cold War-era Eastern Europe, efforts in exploring non-Soviet, professional, or humanist Marxist social and media approaches never stopped (e.g., Leonhard, 1974; Curry, 1990). Even in the former Soviet Union, as Hopkins (1965) noted, there existed various concepts of the press under Soviet leaders Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev (with different directions under the same authoritarian political system). Fischer and Merrill (1970, p. 4) commented that Hopkins’s study suggested that “press concepts in a socialist society not only vary among individuals at any one time, but change—albeit slowly—through the years. Perhaps . . . no press system is really as simplistic or monolithic as might be generally assumed.” We can now conclude that the Schramm schema as a normative communist press theory is not only highly problematic for one’s understanding of mass communication in a non-Soviet-style communist state (such as Tito’s Yugoslavia) or a postcommunist authoritarian, transitional society (such as post-Mao China), but also insufficient to describe empirical communist media systems in general. There is an apparent logical paradox in the theory: On the one hand, it was originally largely a case study of Stalinist Soviet media; on the other hand, it has been widely used as a universal and timeless model to conceptualize communist media systems in general. It is quite amazing that Schramm and his coauthors never published a revised edition of Four Theories in spite of the changing global media environment and criticisms of it from time to time. For one reason or another, Schramm’s Soviet theory as a universal communist press model has survived and remains considerably influential in spite of its lack of adaptability. Thus, when history provided us another opportunity to revisit its legacy through the Chinese case, we could not afford to miss it. The Chinese Case and Altschull’s “Marxist” Press Approach8 Altschull’s effort to contribute ideologically neutral normative press theories beyond the four theories was valuable and rewarding. However, among other things, in Altschull’s dialectical approach, there is some apparent confusion and contradictions. For example, although he referred to the “richness of the many melody variations” in each of the three press movements he advanced (Market, Marxist or Communitarian, and Advancing), and “a good many exceptions” beyond the three movements (Altschull, 1995, p. 419), he provided no substantial case study (and China would have been an appropriate one). While he repeatedly reminded his readers of “similarities” and “differences” among those three press movements, he seemed to attempt to work on both abstract and concrete, and relativism and absolutism, at the same time. 8 The discussion in this section is comparatively brief and abstract because (a) Altschull’s discussion of his three press movements itself was rather abstract; (b) he provided no detailed discussion about China and its journalism when he described China as a “Marxist” state; and (c) the changes in Chinese journalism, which will serve as the historical and empirical support of my critique of Altschull, have already been discussed in my earlier critique of the Schramm schema. 452 Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories For these reasons, in the case of China, described as late as the mid-1990s by Altschull (1995, p. 251) as the world’s largest remaining Marxist state, one ponders: “Is the Chinese case not precisely among what he called ‘a good many exceptions’ beyond his three press typologies?” As addressed earlier, today’s China is, borrowing Altschull’s terms, the world’s largest “Market”-oriented, post-”Marxist” or “Communitarian,” “Advancing” state (with more than 1.3 billion people, more than 70% of them farmers), which has been called a “strange” case (“The world according to Kissinger,” 1995). It is “strange” because it is in transition. Because it is in transition, it can hardly be simplified by a single existing normative press model. It is noteworthy that, although Altschull described China as the world’s largest remaining “Marxist” nation, he neither provided any theoretical or empirical evidence to support his argument, nor balanced his argument by referring to relevant opposing arguments. Moreover, Altschull’s “Marxist/Communitarian” approach, like Schramm’s Soviet model, provided little wisdom for one’s understand of media systems in different Marxist nations. Like Lambeth (1995) and Hachten (1999, p. 34), Altschull’s ignorance of substantial ideological and socioeconomic changes in China since the late 1970s had given him little idea about differences between postcommunist authoritarian China (and Vietnam) and more traditional and orthodox Marxist nations such as Cuba and, particularly, North Korea. His ignorance of China’s media commercialization also contributed to his failure to look closer at Chinese journalism’s specific characteristics under Deng Xiaoping’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Likewise, Altschull‘s analysis, focused on the news media in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, paid little attention to media practices in other socialist states, particularly Tito’s Yugoslavia and post-Mao China. It is doubtful that one can have a comprehensive understanding of the world’s Marxist movement and Marxist press through such a narrow and limited possession of samples and data. Ideological bias, as shown in Schramm’s analysis of the Soviet communist press, often causes oversimplification (Altschull, 1984, p. 108), but oversimplification does not necessarily always result from ideological bias. Altschull’s three typologies appear to be a victim of his own critique of variations and complexities of the world’s media systems and normative media theories’ limited ability in conceptualizing those variations and complexities. He would have provided his readers more critical wisdom to understand both the world’s Marxist press in general and post-Mao Chinese journalism in particular had his analysis been more nonnormative and empirically oriented. Toward a “Transitional Media Approach”? The “conflict” between Chinese journalistic practices and Schramm’s Soviet model and Altschull’s Marxist concept as described in this study resulted from two major factors: China’s changing social and media environment and the two models’ inner theoretical flaws. This not only reminds researchers to be cautious in using the two more or less outdated models to conveniently interpret the Chinese case, 453 Journal of Communication, September 2003 but also, and perhaps more importantly, opens some more general questions about media system studies. Among other things, a key question is this: Do we need to revisit the normative press concept by introducing a transitional press concept that views the world’s media systems through a dynamic way? Normative media theories are useful for comparative analysis of media systems in a general sense because they provide some basic types. Schramm’s model, for example, is useful for understanding Stalinist-Maoist communist media. The model would be useful for historical and comparative analysis of communist media systems as well. On the other hand, it is precisely because normative media theories are about “ideas of how media ought to or are expected to operate” (McQuail, 1987, p. 109) and various normative media theories came into being in certain historical settings that they lack the ability to adapt to changing social and media environments. There is an apparent paradox in the normative media concept. Although theoretically it is widely believed that normative media theories are not designed to examine any empirical media systems but media systems in a general or abstract sense (e.g., McQuail, 1994, p. 133), practically, as shown in this discussion of the Chinese case, many researchers cannot help but do the opposite, risking putting dynamic and complex media realities into various normative pigeonholes. Indeed, some have already questioned whether or not one can ever work out a satisfactory normative media theory at all, considering the growing and almost irresolvable conflict between the normative concept and rapidly changing and expanding media systems in the real world (e.g., McQuail, 1994, pp. 132–135; Nerone, 1995, pp. 181–184). It can be argued as well that if fitting through normative media approach is suspect, then one should probably not rest content with individual empirical studies of media systems alone as well. Empirical studies themselves are not necessarily or automatically nonnormative oriented. Instead, the influential normative approach could cast a big shadow on empirical studies of media systems if researchers lack the consciousness in searching for alternative frameworks. To revisit the normative media approach, researchers may also need an appropriate terminology to conceptualize their ideas—considering the established legacy of the normative approach and the usefulness of terminology itself. Otherwise, individual empirical studies may remain scattered, and their ability in stimulating new/alternative ideas in media system studies might be limited. Because some significant empirical studies of media transition in China have stopped short of challenging Schramm’s Soviet model and Altschull’s Marxist model in terms of both their inner theoretical flaws and their insufficiency in conceptualizing the Chinese case, some researchers continue to put China into the two models. It might be more productive to advance a “transitional media approach” based on some initial ideas below. Nonnormative. A transitional media approach is a nonnormative thinking that views human communication as a history of transition and makes change and adaptation its primary orientation. Transition is a general and universal media phenomenon and all media systems should be analyzed as more or less dynamic and complex. A certain society’s media system is a dynamic and complex body that is connected with, and fundamentally determined by, that society’s changing political and socio-economic environment and cultural tradition. While recogniz454 Transitional Media vs. Normative Theories ing the relative independence of various periods of media development in a certain society’s history, a transitional media perspective emphasizes the dynamic and transitional nature of human communication and draws attention to the variety and complexity within media development. A transitional media approach attempts to revisit or balance the normative media approach by questioning its theoretical sufficiency in conceptualizing the changing media systems in the real world. Particularly, it challenges the wisdom of the idea that tries to put certain media systems into well-defined normative pigeonholes. Instead of viewing certain media systems as a homogenizing and monolithic body, adherents to this approach believe: “In most countries, in any case, the media do not constitute any single ‘system,’ with a single purpose or philosophy, but are composed of many separate, overlapping, often inconsistent elements, with appropriate differences of normative expectation and actual regulation” (McQuail, 1994, p. 133). The approach thus has a historical mission to examine existing normative press models’ theoretical adequacy by comparing the actual roles of a certain society’s news media in the real world with their supposed normative roles through empirical studies on the one hand, and to provide new theoretical pursuits, when possible, on the other hand. Media change is a historical process through both revolution and evolution. Whereas a normative media approach focuses on radical or revolutionary media changes in order to regroup media systems into various normative models, a transitional media approach pays attention to both revolutionary and evolutionary media change and treats both of them as a transitional process that is far more complex than certain normative press models are able to handle. A transitional media approach maintains that certain revolutionary media change is neither the beginning nor the end of change or transition; it is instead more like a result and a part of “daily” evolutionary change of human communication. Revolution may, to certain extent, resolve some old problems or raise new ones. On the other hand, although evolutionary media change takes a silent and gradual route, it does not necessarily mean it is not important or less significant than radical media change. In the eyes of the normative media approach, current Eastern European media systems might be well put into the Western liberal pattern. From a transitional media perspective, however, media change in the region is far from a simple story of the “victory” of democracy, but an ongoing media transition with many and complex meanings. As Margueritte (1995) observed, Eastern European journalism under democracy was actually facing no fewer problems and challenges than it did under communism in terms of poor professional training and standards among the journalists, an invasion of profit-driven Western investors and press models, bribery and corruption, the tendency to control the media from democratically elected new rulers, and the boom of tabloid journalism and the withering of quality media. Similarly, in the case of post-Mao China, social and media reforms are gradual yet significant and lack no challenges as well (e.g., Pei, 1994; Zhao, 1998). Culturally open-minded. A transitional media approach is culturally openminded, viewing human communication as a socio-historical phenomenon from a wide range of theoretical perspectives. It maintains that media transition in vari455 Journal of Communication, September 2003 ous societies may take different paths in different political, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts, and therefore may lead to different and often complex media systems. More importantly, the approach calls for understanding these varieties and complexities from a cultural and historical perspective, rather than judging them from a one-dimensional philosophy or ideology. The post-Cold War era in the information age is witnessing an accelerated social and media transition across the world. Researchers confront more mixed social and media systems than the standard ones described by various normative models. Although some important ideas about transitional media studies have emerged in the research literature (e.g., Curran & Park, 2000; Downing, 1996; McQuail, 1994, pp. 122–123, 132–135; Merrill, 1974, pp. 36–42; Merrill & Lowenstein, 1971, pp. 186–190; Nerone, 1995), challenges remain. 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