An Abortion and an Editorial

A story of a woman being forced to abort her seventh month pregnancy is sending shockwaves throughout the Chinese blogosphere.

Bloggers and commentators are justifiably outraged at the incident, no part of which seemed very humane.

Given how much commentary is already on the internet, I won’t endeavor to add my own on the incident.

Instead I want to point out one of the frequent problems with the journalism on China’s One Child Policy.

Taking this story from the AFP wire for example, we get the following:

1. Headline: China confirms forced abortion case after uproar
2. … she failed to pay a hefty fine for exceeding China’s strict “one-child” population control policy.
3. China has implemented its draconian family planning policy since the late 1970s …
4. Rights groups say that as a result of the policy, thousands of women have been forced by authorities to terminate their pregnancies.

My problems with the way these sentences are structured.

1. The headline misrepresents what happened. China did not confirm anything. The provincial authorities under whose jurisdiction the abortion was carried out confirmed it. Pinning the headline as such oversimplified the story.
2. The word hefty is editorializing. The fine was apparently 40,000RMB. Or around $6,000. While that amount is hefty for many people, maybe even most Chinese families, the word hefty is not objective journalism.
3. Draconian? Without that word, the phrase would be expressing a fact, with “draconian” the phrase passes judgement.
4. This is true. However, rights groups don’t always go to great lengths to verify their facts. When AFP cites such claims, it gives an authority to the claim that it does not deserve.

I will add my own editorial voice here and say that I think this particular case of a forced abortion is terrible. I am deliberately passing judgement here and saying that whoever did it was in the wrong. However, I am also not categorically opposed to China’s One Child Policy. As a policy, I think it is morally ambiguous. We can make moral judgements on specific instances where the policy is implemented, but as a whole the policy is debatable.

I will also say that I think AFP story was poorly written and poorly edited. It was clear from the outset that it intended to criticize the One Child Policy rather than report the facts.

Of course, this type of editorializing doesn’t just occur with coverage of China and is not limited to the AFP, but it is concerning that even the most reliable sources of international news are prone to such errors.

What do you think?

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