ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the intertwined histories of both the Chinese press and US reporting on China are directly relevant to an understanding of the political forces that led up to the Tiananmen incident. In scholarly analysis of the events of spring 1989, the Chinese press is usually discussed as a tool manipulated by factions within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the student movement, whereas the US press is pictured as swayed by familiar sympathetic symbols like the goddess of democracy. The historical literature on US press coverage of China in the twentieth century is sparse, consisting mostly of memoirs and a sprinkling of analytical studies. The symbiotic relationship between the Chinese and US press of the 1930s and 1940s is illustrated further by the intertwined careers of F. McCracken Fisher and Liu Zunqi. Media analysts often depict US coverage in 1989 as naive.
