The unfolding news coverage of Hepatitis A vaccine in Chinese press last summer provides a good example of how the Chinese media destroys a good vaccine with bad journalism.

A 6-year-old girl Li Wei took hepatitis A vaccine along with 2,500 kids in Anhui province on June 16. A week later, Li Wei died of diarrhea as diagnosed by local medical doctors. But a local newspaper reported that Li Wei was killed by the poisonous vaccine.

The accusation was echoed throughout Chinese press. The next day, najor newspapers of the country published probes of the death of Li Wei. Overnight, hepatitis A vaccine was headlined as “life killing vaccine i” in all Chinese media. The next day, the country’s national TV network CCTV started series investigative reporting in its primetime news hours, focusing
on the plight of LI Wei. Tens of millions of Chinese saw it and no doubt believed it.

The high level of media coverage about Hepatitis A vaccine not only elicited public attention but most importantly engaged government concern and stimulated policy response. After watching the CCTV news probe of Li Wei plight, Premier Wen got so angry with the vaccine that he handwrote an instruction to the minister of health, “人命关天“（this is a case of human life and should be treated with the utmost care）.

Under the pressure of the press and the anger of the public, Chinese public health departments at all levels suddenly decided to stop the use of all vaccines. The pressure from the press also led to a criminal investigation of the local hospitals and the scientist who invented the vaccine decades ago.

Under the frightening pressure of the press, the increasing public anger and sentiment expressed in the press and the internet and under the instruction of the Premier, Minister Gao of Health led a team of the country’s top medical scientists to Anhui to investigate the event.

 The investigation found out that the death of Li Wei had nothing to do with hepatitis A vaccine. The vaccine is a good vaccine and not harmful. Since it was applied to human being a decade ago, the population of hepatitis A in China have been reduced from an annual one million cases to 200,000. Among the 130 million Chinese who took the vaccine, no one was killed or got ill.

Facing the tyranny of news media in its coverage of the vaccine, Minister Gao decided that the truth about the vaccine should not come out from his mouth.  He could not afford offending the public sentiment by saying something different from the press. If he tells the truth about the death of the girl and the truth of the vaccine, he would face an avalanche of criticism and personal attacks He did not want to make unpopular statement about the vaccine. He was not prepared for the media attack.

But someone had to tell the truth to the public. Who was going to take the job of telling the truth?

Finally it was Prof. Mao Jiangsen, Chinese leading scientist in Hepatitis A and the inventor of the vaccine told the truth in his interview with the press.

And the result of his telling truth, he instantly became the public enemy. The next day, leading newspapers throughout the country launched a demonizing campaign against Prof. Mao, filled with personal insults.

Bad journalism in China also means that when the media produce errors, they do not admit and correct their mistakes. If other people expose their errors they would be shamed into anger. The Hepatitis vaccine event and many other similar media events taking place almost everyday in China become a scene reminiscent of China’s cultural revolution. When one media decided to attack someone, most of the other the media would join hands in the attacks. Those being attacked in the press had no right of self-defense.

Out of the case of Hepatitis A vaccine, a fear is growing in the public. Intimidated and scared by the exaggerated, biased and even made-up one-sided news and views, the fear of getting into trouble with the press is the biggest deterrent for the government and business officials and leaders to build up a workable relationship.

Many people are afraid that if the press published lies about you, you have no way to correct it. The lies will fly around the world like a broken feather pillow, you will never get your name cleaned.

In the case of Hepatitis A vaccine, the aggrieved party was not only the medical scientist, but the public as a whole. The public was betrayed by the press. The frightening coverage of hepatitis A vaccine illustrates the power of Chinese media in distorting public perceptions and shaping the public opinion in adverse way. As the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said "The
opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

Due to the lack of training, most Chinese journalists have to chose the low threshold issues such as scandals instead of high threshold of scientific and medical issues. As a result of paying attention to the low threshold issues such as scandals, there exist tensions among journalists, scientists and patients, not only during a crisis, but also in daily news coverage. Our studies found that medical scientists complained that journalists often oversimplify science issues and they do not understand many of the basics of medical science. And even worse, most journalists are not interested in understanding the basics of medical science and presenting them to the public at all.

 In defending themselves, journalists would argue that they have to report newsworthy “news”. In identifying newsworthy topics, journalists often seek out stories that are potential attention grabbers, which are often conflicts, controversies and scandals But as the Irish playwright Geroge Bernard Shaw said years ago, "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization."

Before I end my speech, I want to quote another American journalist of 19th century. In 1880, John Swinton, the former editor of the New York Time and the New York Sun, was the guest of honor at a banquet. Swinton outraged his fellow journalists by a reply to a toast of independent press :

There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the
streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

     Thank you.

                           （2006年2月28日 纽约）