Chinese journalists must remember they are first and foremost ''mouthpieces'' of the state, the new head of CCTV, the powerful state-run broadcaster, has said. Hu Zhanfan, who took the reins at CCTV in November, said journalists who kidded themselves that they were independent professionals, rather than ''propaganda workers'', were making a ''fundamental mistake about identity''.
In an event hosted by the China National Media Association, Mr Hu told his colleagues that ''the first social responsibility and professional ethic of media staff should be understanding their role clearly as a good mouthpiece''.
The Communist Party has held to a Marxist-Leninist view of journalism as a tool of propaganda, even as it seeks to commercialise the sector and expand into markets overseas. But hearing the party line so bluntly voiced by Mr Hu was enough to depress many journalists about the prospects of China loosening its tight control of the sector.
Mr Hu's comments, posted on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, generated 10,000 responses. ''As a media student, I feel very depressed,'' one web user said. ''People who are doing advertising claim that they are doing news.''
Jiao Guobiao, a former professor of media and journalism at Peking University, said: ''Whether you study journalism or work as a journalist, you are told this mantra over and over again, that you work for the party and are its mouthpiece. The problem is that only the party gets a mouthpiece, the public does not get a mouthpiece.''
Referring to the outrage on the internet, Dr Jiao said: ''Kids born in the '80s and '90s are not aware of how the system works, so they get angry and indignant. The paradox is that the media has borrowed the Western concepts of objectivity and neutrality, but put them in the service of propaganda. Hopefully things will change in five to 10 years' time.''