Do Chinese journalists hate their jobs?

Published on China Daily and making the rounds of people who like to discuss that sort of thing is a survey conducted in honor of Journalists’ Day showing that 80% of people employed in the media profession in China want to change jobs.

No one is really shocked at this, and if they are, a quick glance at some of the other survey results – poor salary, health problems, saturated marketplace – explains things nicely. That the top two pressures faced by reporters were “deep discomfort over the inability to use public discourse to punish the bad and praise the good” and “inability to overcome obstacles on many fronts during the reporting process” merely confirms the conventional wisdom about China’s media.

While these things may be true, it’s probably best not to take the survey as ironclad evidence. Beijing’s Mirror has as a subhead for its full-page spread on the results, “This paper joined with Zhaopin to conduct an online survey.” And the official results themselves, which reveal nothing about methodology, note that “in the short space of one week, over 500 people participated in the survey.” When asked about its surveys, Zhaopin revealed that each survey is conducted on its website on both the front page and in a related “survey column.” Given the abundance of accurate online polls we’ve seen here at Danwei, we’re inclined to view this one with the usual suspicion.

Furthermore, the reporting on this one has been pretty shoddy even for a web poll. China Daily mentions 500 responses, which is the number given in the results page at Zhaopin (Zhaopin conducts a poll every week but typically reports results in percentages, so this number is unusually precise). Jiefang Daily says “over 300 reporters,” taken from the 2/3 of respondents who said they worked in media. The Mirror gives the number of valid forms as 650.

And the finding trumpeted in headlines as “80% of reporters want to change jobs” comes out of the question “Have you ever considered changing professions?” Not quite the same thing, and considering the source of the survey, quite understandable.

To commemorate Journalists’ Day next year it’d be nice to have a survey of more than just reporters who happen to be cruising a headhunter site.