There have been moments in my life where I suddenly forgot which year I was in. I am still quite young and should have sharp thoughts and a tremendous amount of free memory storage in my brain. However, the amount of the information I have been getting everyday has been overwhelming. In addition to traditional media channels such as TV, newspaper and websites, we are all getting information (including news) from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and WeChat (as a heavy Chinese news consumer). While Facebook denies that it plays a role as a media platform, it really is. Facebook has 1.8 billion users and 44 percent of Americans get their news from the site, according to the Pew Research Center. Looking back to my 2016, it was bitter sweet. And it made me realize the reality of the U.S. media industry and that in general, working in the U.S. requires a big heart.
When I was a high school student in China, I learned in my politics class that in a capitalist country like the U.S., people value individualism and interests more than collectivism, and sometimes, in a cruel way. I didn’t understand it fully at that moment. But now, I feel like I can testify it, using my own example.
It is a sad reality to know that the media industry in the U.S. has become so competitive and that working as a contractor is not uncommon. When I graduated from NYU in 2013, I was working as a contractor for 3 years, almost. Bloomberg, Facebook, etc... Those companies sound amazing and dreamy but they hired third-party agents to hire contractors and the new hires didn’t receive the same benefit as those working full-time in those organizations. At the same time, as an international, I am glad that I don’t face penalty for lacking basic health insurance. I know the importance of staying healthy because seeing a doctor here without health insurance can be suicidal. Contractors working in the media industry get paid hourly and usually don’t get affordable health insurance. Some of my former colleagues spent more than $200 per month on health insurance offered by our third-party agency. This past week, I had a media tour at Yahoo in New York. When someone in our group (most of us are journalists) asked if the people working at Yahoo were mostly full-time, the tour lady ( who is a Yahoo full-time employee) said that the majority of them were freelancers (contractors). I felt saddened after hearing the word “majority.” While it is not fair to blame the reality of competitiveness, it was uneasy to realize that working as a contractor means less stability.
The media industry in China is competitive too but contractors are less common. I discussed this with my parents in China many times over the phone. Not only did they tell me that working as a contractor in China is less common, but that firing people while breaking the contract is against the law. And if that happens, employers have to face lawsuit. Usually, in China, a new hire goes through a 2-3 months’ trial period and if everything works out, the new hire becomes a full-time employee, signing a contract that is law-binding to both parties and gets insurances (health insurance, pension similar to 401K in the U.S., etc.). This sounds tempting and made me want to go back home many times. While living in the U.S. for almost 7 years, I feel like this place has become a magnet that attracts me, for better or worse. Maybe one day, when I am not a contractor, I will go back.
Now, you may argue that working in the media industry in China means lacking the freedom of speech and of the press. Many people in the U.S. asked me about this and I found it not only to be untrue but offensive. Putting aside the sensation of being patriotic, the truth is that the media industry in China is changing and transforming. The program that many Chinese people are watching now is different from the one that was aired 20 years ago. While practicing journalism here in the U.S., I noticed an interesting way of describing Xin Hua News Agency or CCTV. It would be dubbed “the state-run media agency.” While it is true that those publications were operated by the Chinese government, it is not fair to deny that there are many other media outlets in China that are not afraid of covering political corruptions and social injustice, especially since President Xi took office in 2013. Many high-profile politicians including the former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai and former senior politician within the Ministry of Railways were punished in a wave of crackdown on bribery and political corruption since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Nov. 8, 2012. And their stories appeared on CCTV, Xinhua News and many others.
While living in the U.S. for almost 7 years, I made a lot of American friends in the field of journalism and have developed some important qualities including tenacity and persistence. Those qualities are so important that they will always keep me working hard in a competitive U.S. media industry and finding my own value as a story-teller.
