Introduction

On July 14, 2001, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Beijing would host the 2008 Olympics. Fireworks went off in Tiananmen that night as the Chinese people celebrated the honor that the IOC had conferred to their capital city and country. Yet, on the other side of the world, the news that Beijing would host the Olympics was not nearly as welcome. When newspapers in the United States hit the stands the following morning, many denounced the IOC’s decision, arguing that the IOC had rewarded a country with a poor human rights record an undeserved honor. Many less impassioned writers portrayed the IOC’s announcement in a mixed or neutral way. However, very few praised the IOC’s decision.

How did American newspapers portray the Beijing Olympics before and after the IOC’s decision? More specifically, did they cover the Olympics in a positive, negative, mixed, or neutral light, and why? In this paper, I seek to answer these questions within the specific context of five American newspapers: the New York Times (NY Times), the Los Angeles Times (LA Times), the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Raleigh News and Observer (N&O), and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). Furthermore, I contextualize my findings by analyzing them according to three different time periods: January 1, 2001-July 13, 2001; July 14, 2001-December 31, 2001; and January 1, 2006-November 10, 2007. Ultimately, I found that though most of the news articles I surveyed were not negative, there were much more negative articles than there were positive, mixed, or neutral; furthermore, the percentage of negative articles published has increased over time.

Methodology

To conduct my research, I used content analysis to compare coverage of the Beijing Olympics in five newspapers across three variables: newspaper type, time period, and article type. My analysis included all the articles written in the aforementioned newspapers concerning the Beijing Olympics that were neither strictly focused on sports reporting nor only tangentially related to the Olympics. For example, I did not include articles that discussed which sports teams were competing in the Olympics or articles that only mentioned the Olympics once or twice. These kinds of articles accompany all Olympic Games, and would not have provided me with any information specific to the Beijing Olympics.

Analyzing the coverage according to newspaper, time period, and article type allowed me to think critically about the following questions: which newspapers portrayed the Olympics most negatively or positively? How were the Olympics portrayed across time periods? What kinds of articles—editorials, news reports, or sports—contained the most negative portrayal?

Coding

I coded the articles according to whether they were predominantly negative, positive, neutral, or mixed. Negative articles were either negative in tone or discussed themes (such as human rights violations, poor environment, invasion of private freedoms) that were likely to create a negative image of the Beijing Olympics. Positive articles were either positive in tone or discussed themes (such as economic growth) that were likely to create a positive image of the Beijing Olympics. Neutral articles were either neutral in tone or did not discuss any positive or negative themes but merely stated facts. Mixed articles were either ambivalent in tone or contained both positive and negative themes. It is useful to distinguish between neutral and mixed articles because in fact, they constitute very different modes of representing a particular story; while neutral articles don’t express opinions, mixed articles frequently do.

Such a coding scheme was necessary to ensure that I applied the same definitions of negative, positive, neutral, and mixed articles to all the stories included in my analysis.

Choice of Newspapers

As I mentioned in the introduction, I chose five newspapers to analyze: the NY Times, the LA Times, the Plain Dealer, the N&O, and the AJC. By most accounts, these newspapers are reputable and well known for their journalistic merit. The NY Times and the LA Times, in particular, are often viewed as models for excellent news reporting.[1],[2] In addition, the other three newspapers are held as regional standards of newspaper excellence. I purposely chose both national and regional newspapers to discover whether and how coverage differed depending on newspaper size. In addition, these five newspapers represent different regions of the United States, which I felt would result in different accounts of the Beijing Olympics. I hypothesized, for example, that Los Angeles’ high Chinese population/readership would have some effect upon the LA Times’ portrayal of the Olympics.

I should mention that I did not choose these particular newspapers because I believed them to be representative of American newspapers in general. In fact, considering the vast diversity of newspapers in the United States, they probably are not. However, as top national and regional newspapers, they are more frequently emulated by other news media and are thus more worthy of study than are, for example, smaller or more mediocre newspapers.

Time Period

I also compared coverage of the Beijing Olympics across three time periods: January 1, 2001-July 13, 2001 (roughly, the six months leading up to the IOC’s July 14th announcement), July 14, 2001-December 31, 2001 (the six months following the IOC’s announcement), and January 1, 2006-November 10, 2007 (the most recent period consisting of the past 23 months). I chose to analyze coverage during these three time periods in particular because it seemed likely that high numbers of articles regarding the Olympics would be published during these periods.

In addition, examining news content across time periods is valuable for two reasons: first, it allows us to perceive anomalies in coverage; second, it contextualizes news stories to help explain these anomalies. For example, a sudden spike in negative coverage over a certain time period may not be noticeable unless it is compared with coverage spanning other time periods; furthermore, this sudden spike might be better understood in the context of concurrent events.

Article Type

Finally, I sorted the stories according to whether they were editorials, news coverage reports, or sports articles. The differences between these types of articles are potentially significant. Because editorials express opinions and perhaps even biases, they might be more likely to exhibit positive or negative viewpoints than mixed or neutral viewpoints; news coverage reports are usually more objective and fact-oriented than are editorials and thus should not express as many opinions; and finally, sports reporters (and consequently sports stories) sometimes exhibit a different, perhaps freer style in their descriptions than do coverage reporters and editorialists. Thus, accounting for differences in article types when analyzing overall coverage may help explain certain trends in the portrayal of the Beijing Olympics. For example, the publication of more editorials than coverage articles may belie the promotion of a more biased view rather than a more neutral view.

Results

Time Period 1: January 1, 2001-July 13, 2001

During the six and a half months before the IOC announced that Beijing would host the 2008 Olympics, many journalists speculated that Beijing was the frontrunner candidate, with Paris and Toronto following close behind as other potential host cities. However, since the decision had not been set in stone, some journalists used their writing to try to prevent the IOC from allowing Beijing to host the 2008 Olympics. For example, NY Times journalist Tom Lantos wrote an article arguing that “turning a blind eye to the egregious human rights violations taking place every day in China …permits an authoritarian regime to exploit the Games to prop up its faltering legitimacy” and that consequently, the “IOC should reject China’s bid and protect the Olympic ideal.”[3] I wasn’t surprised that Lantos voiced concern over the IOC’s leanings towards Beijing. On the contrary, I was surprised that more people did not voice their opinions about the prospect of Beijing as the next Olympics city. After all, the opinions voiced during this time period might have affected the IOC’s choice. Moreover, even if these opinions would not have mattered to the IOC, editorialists still might have felt that their opinions mattered. Thus, I was surprised to find that only 1/3 of the articles were negative and aimed to change the IOC’s decision; most of the articles written during this time period were neutral or mixed. The sports articles, in particular, were very well balanced, featuring two positive, two negative, and nine neutral or mixed stories:

Totals: All Newspapers

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	5	3	2	10	34.5%
Positive		1	2	3	10.3%
Neutral		1	5	6	20.7%
Mixed		6	4	10	34.5%
Totals:	5	11	13	29

It should be noted, however, that all of the editorials written during this time period were negative and aimed to change the IOC’s trajectory. Editorialists writing for the NY Times, in particular, argued against the possibility of a Beijing Olympics. During this time period, not only did the NY Times publish more editorials than any of the other newspapers, but it also published more editorials than coverage articles. This latter observation is especially noteworthy because in this study, I found no other instances in which a newspaper that published more than five articles during a given time period featured more editorials than coverage articles:

NY Times

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	4		2	6	46.2%
Positive				0	0%
Neutral			2	2	15.4%
Mixed		2	3	5	38.5%
Totals:	4	2	7	13

On the other hand, the LA Times was the only newspaper that featured positive stories at all, possibly because it is published in an area with a high population of Chinese:

LA Times

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	1	1		2	16.7%
Positive		1	2	3	25%
Neutral			3	3	25%
Mixed		3	1	4	33.3%
Totals:	1	5	6	12

In the three regional newspapers, the 2008 Beijing Olympics were hardly covered. In the Plain Dealer, there were no articles covering the Olympics at all during this particular time frame; in the N&O, there was one neutral coverage article; and in the AJC, there were three coverage articles, one of which was mixed and two of which were negative. Thus, relative to the NY Times and the LA Times, these three newspapers seemed much less interested in the IOC’s decision, exhibiting less speculation about which city—Beijing, Paris, or Toronto—would win the honor, and offering no editorialized opinions about which city would be the best (or worst) host. One explanation for this discrepancy is that the regional newspapers cater to more specific regional audiences than do the NY Times and the LA Times and are thus more committed to providing local readers with issues that proximately affect their lives in the near future.

Time Period 2: July 14, 2001-December 31, 2001

In comparison to the six months before the IOC’s announcement, there were higher numbers and percentages of negative, positive, and neutral articles, but there were fewer mixed articles:

Totals: All Newspapers

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	5	3	6	14	46.8%
Positive	1	2	2	5	16.8%
Neutral	1	5	1	7	23.3%
Mixed		2	2	4	16.7%
Totals:	7	12	11	30

Perhaps increases occurred in negative, positive, and neutral articles because immediately following the IOC’s decision, journalists might have felt pressured to choose between forming an opinion and not forming an opinion; both options were fine, but expressing ambivalence regarding the already-made decision by writing a mixed article may not have seemed productive at the time. In turns out that when journalists did formulate opinions regarding the Olympics, they were mostly negative. More specifically, 71.4% (or 5/7) of editorials were negative. This time, the coverage articles were the most balanced, including 3 negative stories, 2 positive, and 7 mixed or neutral stories.

Once again, the Plain Dealer and the N&O demonstrated very little coverage of the Olympics: in the Plain Dealer, there was only one positive editorial, and in the N&O, there was one neutral editorial. Interestingly, the AJC contained significantly higher coverage of the Olympics immediately after the IOC’s announcement:

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	3	1		4	44.4%
Positive		2		2	22.2%
Neutral		3		3	33.3%
Mixed
Totals:	3	6		9

One explanation for the AJC’s apparent increased interest in the Olympics is that Atlanta had recently hosted its own Olympics in 1996. As a result, Atlantans might have been interested to find out which city the IOC had selected to host the 2008 Olympics. Additionally, the relatively high percentage of positive articles published might also speak to the fact that Atlanta experienced economic growth because of the Olympics and thus, Atlantan journalists might have been more ready to accept that Beijing would, too.[4]

Surprisingly, this time around, the LA Times published the highest number and percentage of negative articles of all the newspapers:

LA Times

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	1	1	3	5	62.5%
Positive			1	1	12.5%
Neutral		1		1	12.5%
Mixed		1		1	12.5%
Totals:	1	3	4	8

This sudden spike might make more sense in context: following the IOC’s announcement, a number of Chinese-Americans living in the Los Angeles region expressed concern over the IOC’s choice.[5] The concern from the Chinese community may have given the LA Times writers the confidence to criticize the IOC’s decision, as well.

In addition, the NY Times published a lower percentage and number of negative articles and a higher percentage and number of positive articles during this period than it had during the previous period:

NY Times

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	1	1	2	4	36.4%
Positive			1	1	9.1%
Neutral		1	1	2	18.2%
Mixed	1	1	2	4	36.4%
Totals:	2	3	6	11

Of course, it’s important to note that since there were no positive articles published by the NY Times during Period 1, even the fact that the NY Times published a single positive article would represent a misleadingly drastic percentage increase in positive articles. Furthermore, the single positive article published during this time period did not praise the IOC’s decision or the fact that Beijing was to host the Olympics; rather, it focused on how proud Chinese-Americans were that Beijing had been chosen.[6]

Time Period 3: January 1, 2006-November 10, 2007

In the past 23 months, there were only 63 articles published on the Beijing Olympics in all five newspapers combined. Considering that in 2001 alone, there were 59 articles published, this number seems small, especially since the Olympics are looming on the horizon less than a year away. However, it is possible that by 2006, Olympics coverage was no longer as newsworthy a topic as it had been in 2001 because people had already grown to accept the fact that Beijing would host the Olympics.

Yet, though the writers may have accepted this fact, my results indicate that they (especially the editorialists) were unsatisfied with it. Significantly, for the first time, a majority of articles written during this period were negative, and there were many fewer positive articles to counteract this negativism than there had been in previous periods:

Totals: All Newspapers

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	13	17	2	32	50.8%
Positive		5	1	6	9.5%
Neutral	3	11		14	22.2%
Mixed	2	8	1	11	17.5%
Totals:	18	41	4	63

Perhaps this increase in negative reporting reflects that more and more, the Olympics have come to be associated and implicated with Chinese policy in general. Especially since China has received a great deal of negative publicity recently for the poor quality of its exports, human rights violations, environmental concerns, etc., the Beijing Olympics may have come to be associated with this negativity. This association is significant, especially since the Beijing Olympics are not really related to many of the governmental policies with which they are linked. For example, in actuality, what does the Beijing Olympics have to do with China’s position on foreign policy dealing with Burmese rioters? Apparently, some journalists believe the Olympics should be used as a bargaining tool to encourage China to reform towards a more democratic state—even when the Olympics have little direct link with the policies that require reform.

This “bargaining tool” idea was certainly advanced in the NY Times. For example, Roger Cohen argued that “the nine months to the Olympics present a unique opportunity to shame China into shepherding Burmese reform.”[7] Another recent NY Times article corroborated Cohen’s viewpoint in almost threatening tones: “Beijing’s rulers need to know that the world is watching to see whether it will now use its influence to stop the killing in Myanmar — or again abdicate the responsibilities that come with real world leadership.”[8] Given such strong rhetoric, perhaps it should not come as a surprise that the NY Times contained the highest number of negative articles on the Olympics:

NY Times

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	7	10	2	19	61.3%
Positive		2		2	6.45%
Neutral	1	5		6	19.4%
Mixed	1	3		4	12.9%
Totals:	9	20	2	31

Conversely, the LA Times contained the highest percentage of positive stories and a relatively low percentage of negative stories:

LA Times

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	4	4		8	34.8%
Positive		3	1	4	17.4%
Neutral	1	3		4	17.4%
Mixed	1	5	1	7	30.4%
Totals:	6	15	2	23

Unlike the NY Times, the LA Times published articles demonstrating the massive and innovative changes in infrastructure Beijing was creating for the Olympics, declaring that it was “Beijing’s time to shine.”[9] The LA Times also optimistically pointed out that Beijing was responding to Olympics-related environmental concerns.[10]

Lastly, as usual, the regional papers contained very few articles regarding the Beijing Olympics: the Plain Dealer contained one negative editorial, three negative coverage stories, and one neutral coverage story; the N&O only contained two neutral coverage stories; and the AJC only published one original negative editorial and one neutral editorial.

General Trends and Observations:

Finally, it is useful to aggregate all of my results to obtain a holistic picture of what coverage of the Beijing Olympics was like in all five newspapers across all three time periods:

Totals:

	Editorials	Coverage	Sports	Totals:	Percentages:
Negative	23	23	10	56	45.9%
Positive	1	8	5	14	11.5%
Neutral	4	17	6	27	22.1%
Mixed	2	16	7	25	20.5%
Totals:	30	64	28	122

Once the results are aggregated, we observe three significant trends: first, we can see that negative articles comprise the most significant chunk of the total number of articles. That is, negative articles may not comprise the majority of articles, but there were more negative articles than there were positive, neutral, or mixed articles. Conversely, there were fewer positive articles than negative, neutral, or mixed. This general trend was especially true of the NY Times, but even the LA Times, which presented a relatively favorable picture of the Olympics, contained a pretty high percentage (roughly 35%) of negative articles.

Second, editorials tended to be largely negative and were highly unlikely to be positive. In fact, only 1 editorial out of 30 was positive, whereas 23 out of 30 were negative, indicating that opinions about the Olympics, once formed, tended to be negative.

Finally, throughout time periods, the quantities and percentages of negative articles increased, from 34.5% to 46.5% to 50.8%. One way to explain this general trend is that coverage of the Beijing Olympics has been increasingly lumped with news coverage of China, which has been largely negative.[11]

Limitations

Several factors limit the extent to which my study might be extended and applied to other areas of scholarship. First, my study is bound by certain narrowly constructed constraints: I only sampled articles within three distinct time periods from five distinct newspapers. Thus, my results cannot imply much about continuous, uninterrupted representation of the Beijing Olympics from 2001 to today, although it can offer some valuable insights regarding continuous representation of the Olympics during the year 2001. In addition, I only chose five newspapers to survey. However, to make a broader statement about the way newspaper media in general portrayed the Beijing Olympics, I would have had to sample far more newspapers. Finally, I should point out that though I adhered to a defined coding scheme when analyzing the articles, others’ opinions/interpretations regarding the articles may nonetheless differ from my own. Thus, I propose that future studies involve four or five people in coding and analyzing the same articles to lessen the impact of personal opinions and interpretations.

Nevertheless, I believe that the findings presented here are largely valid because they have been based upon carefully collected content analyses of the articles. Furthermore, my findings provide some important insights into the ways newspaper size, time period, and article type might affect portrayals of a certain event.

Conclusion

The main finding of this paper is that articles (especially editorials) regarding the Beijing Olympics were more likely to be negative than positive, neutral, or mixed, and that negative articles appear to be on the rise. This finding corroborates previous scholarship demonstrating that coverage of China-related issues in general is largely negative. For example, a study comparing the coverage of China in the NY Times and LA Times in 1992 and 2001 found that “the overall tone of the stories on China remains consistently negative across time.”[12] Another study analyzing the portrayal of China in the Washington Post, the NY Times, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2002 found that “the overall theme of the major news dailies is to portray China in a negative manner.”[13] Thus, it may be that negative portrayal of the Beijing Olympics is really a reflection on negative portrayal of China.

If this is true, a more fundamental question remains that should be addressed in future research: why is coverage of China so negative? Previous scholarship has argued that American international journalism exhibits a “strong ideological inclination toward interpreting foreign cultures via domestic standards.”[14] The coverage of the Beijing Olympics certainly reflects this trend; in fact, as I mentioned previously, some writers argued that the Beijing Olympics should be used as a bargaining chip to secure certain provisions from the Chinese government.

To a certain extent, this kind of criticism is understandable. When it comes to American ideals like democracy, freedom of the press, human rights, etc., it’s oftentimes hard to submit to visions that conflict with our own. However, in our modern globalizing economy, it is becoming increasingly important to understand foreign countries within their unique cultural contexts. Even if the journalists are right and the Olympics should be used to promote positive change in China, we should at the very least examine what we mean by “positive change,” and whether or not that holds relevance in China. In other words, we should evaluate whether our conception of societal progress is viable in a country so culturally different from our own. At the very least, journalists should promote inter-societal understanding by conveying a more comprehensive, culturally sensitive way of understanding foreign countries. Such increased understanding might help facilitate negotiations with China. On the other hand, continuing our current negative portrayal of China and its highly anticipated Beijing Olympics will likely aggravate relations between the two countries.[15] Thus, rather than assuming that the way we understand government in the United States is the way it can or should be understood in other countries, perhaps our journalists should help us understand the cultural frameworks supporting foreign governmental systems that may not make sense to us.

Works Cited

Cohen, Roger. “Monks and China Rising.” New York Times. 10 October 2007.

Dorogi, Thomas L. Tainted Perceptions: Liberal-Democracy and American Popular Images of China, Lanham: University Press of American, 2001.

Editorial. “See No Evil, Speak No Truth.” New York Times. 29 September 2007.

French, Steven P., and Mike E. Disher. “Atlanta and the Olympics: A One-Year Retrospective.” Journal of American Planning Association, 63 (1997): 379-393.

Kang, Connie. “Chinese Americans Feel Joy, Concern Over Choice.” Los Angeles Times. 14 July 2001.

Landsberg, Mitchell. “Clearing the Air For the Olympics.” LA Times. 11 August 2007.

Lantos, Tom. “IOC Should Reject China for 2008.” New York Times. 8 July 2001.

Liss, Alexander. “Images of China in the American Print Media: A Survey From 2000 to 2002.” Journal of Contemporary China, 12 no. 35 (2003), 299-318.

Peng, Zengjun. “Representation of China: An Across Time Analysis of Coverage in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.” Asian Journal of Communication, 14 no. 1 (March 2004), 53-67.

Spano, Susan. “Beijing Rising.” LA Times. 16 September 2007.

“Top Ten Newspapers by Circulation,” http://www.newspapers.com/top10.html, Accessed 14 November 2007.

Weiss, Carol H. “What America’s Leaders Read.” Public Opinion Quarterly, 38 (1974), 1-22.

Wong, Edward. “Chinese-American Pride Swells After Decision.” New York Times. 14 July 2001.

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[1] Carol H. Weiss, “What America’s Leaders Read,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 38 (1974), 5.

[2] “Top Ten Newspapers by Circulation,” http://www.newspapers.com/top10.html, Accessed 14 November 2007.

[3]Tom Lantos, “IOC Should Reject China for 2008,” New York Times, 8 July 2001.

[4] Steven P. French and Mike E. Disher, “Atlanta and the Olympics: A One-Year Retrospective,” Journal of American Planning Association 63 (1997): 390.

[5]Connie Kang, “Chinese Americans Feel Joy, Concern Over Choice,” Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2001.

[6]Edward Wong, “Chinese-American Pride Swells After Decision,” New York Times, 14 July 2001.

[7] Roger Cohen, “Monks and China Rising,” New York Times, 10 October 2007.

[8] Editorial, “See No Evil, Speak No Truth,” New York Times, 29 September 2007.

[9] Susan Spano, “Beijing Rising,” LA Times, 16 September 2007.

[10] Mitchell Landsberg, “Clearing the Air For the Olympics,” LA Times, 11 August 2007.

[11] Alexander Liss, “Images of China in the American Print Media: A Survey From 2000 to 2002,” Journal of Contemporary China, 12 no. 35 (2003), 300.

[12] Zengjun Peng, “Representation of China: An Across Time Analysis of Coverage in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times,” Asian Journal of Communication, 14 no. 1 (March 2004), 64.

[13] Alexander Liss, “Images of China in the American Print Media: A Survey From 2000 to 2002,” Journal of Contemporary China, 12 no. 35 (2003), 300.

[14] Thomas L. Dorogi, Tainted Perceptions: Liberal-Democracy and American Popular Images of China, (Lanham: University Press of American, 2001), 79.

[15] Alexander Liss, “Images of China in the American Print Media: A Survey From 2000 to 2002,” Journal of Contemporary China, 12 no. 35 (2003), 317-318.

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