This paper explores how tightening ideological control weakens media monitoring in China by examining accident reporting in 230 subnational newspapers from 2010 to 2020. In the reform era, commercial newspapers, completely owned but not fully funded by the state, effectively play a role of monitoring by reporting newsworthy and relatively safe topics such as accidents and disasters. The media ideological campaign launched in 2016 by President Xi Jinping dramatically reduced the amount of accident news coverage, especially the investigative reporting. Exploiting the fact that the rollout of this campaign is linked to Xi’s personal authority, I find that the reduction in local accident reporting is 1.31 standard error greater for media outlets in Xi’s client provinces than those in othe...[ Read more ]

This paper explores how tightening ideological control weakens media monitoring in China by examining accident reporting in 230 subnational newspapers from 2010 to 2020. In the reform era, commercial newspapers, completely owned but not fully funded by the state, effectively play a role of monitoring by reporting newsworthy and relatively safe topics such as accidents and disasters. The media ideological campaign launched in 2016 by President Xi Jinping dramatically reduced the amount of accident news coverage, especially the investigative reporting. Exploiting the fact that the rollout of this campaign is linked to Xi’s personal authority, I find that the reduction in local accident reporting is 1.31 standard error greater for media outlets in Xi’s client provinces than those in other provinces. This reduction is particularly strong for self-funding newspapers, suggesting that media freedom brought about by the marketization reform has been reversed.