Guilty without trial: state-sponsored cheating and the 2008 Beijing Olympic women's gymnastics competition

Abstract

One of the most widely covered news stories during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics involved several Chinese female gymnasts who had allegedly falsified their ages and were in fact ineligible for competition because they were underage. Using a news-framing analysis, this study examines how New York Times and Washington Post reporters framed the scandal. I argue that by employing the frames of state-sponsored cheating, assumed guilt, Western fair play and kowtowing, US journalists positioned the controversy as part of a larger ideological metaphor to represent China's refusal to adhere to Western standards, and to explain how this enables the nation to unfairly bypass the United States in the Olympics and in general as a world power. To rectify what they perceive to be a power imbalance, reporters craft a new narrative in which the Chinese gymnasts and, by extension, China itself, are not the victors in the contest for supremacy between East and West. In so doing, journalists evoke, support, and perpetuate the US' historical racialization of the Chinese as a slight, effeminate, deceitful people, thereby assigning these qualities to China as a nation and as a people. While journalists assuage US readers' fears of a future dominated by China, they close off avenues of understanding by positioning the US and China as enemies.

Keywords::

• US-Sino relations
• news framing analysis
• rhetorical analysis
• 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
• representations of China

Notes

^1. Richard Entman (1993, p. 52) delineates the various functions of frames, explaining that “frames define problems – determine what a causal agent is doing with what costs and benefits, usually measured in terms of common cultural values”. He asserts that frames also “identify the forces creating the problem”, make moral judgments that “evaluate causal agents and their effects”, and offer solutions.

^2. Exemplars, or examples, are references to real events that are used to frame the issue. Depictions refer to the manner in which the interpretive package or frame is characterized and described in news coverage. Catchphrases are specific words or phrases that are commonly used by news commentators, which convey a frame.

^3. Consequences refer to the implications of different policies posited by the frame. Roots encapsulate the causal elements that help explain the issue or event being framed. Appeals to principle are moral appeals included in the framing of an issue.

^4. The frames represented in the signature matrices can be categorized at a meta-level. These categories include metaframes, master frames, sub-frames, and themes. Metaframes compose the broadest category of frames, which are the overarching frames underlying news coverage of a specific issue or topic. Gamson describes metaframes as “subtexts that go beyond a single news story” (1989, p. 159). According to political scientist Murray Edelman (1988), these frames comprise the spectacle created by media coverage, which “continuously constructs and reconstructs social problems, crises, enemies and leaders and so creates a succession of threats and reassurances” (p. 1). Master frames are the second broadest category of frames, which function at a macro level and encompass the perspective used to situate a news story. Master frames are comprised of sub-frames and themes. Scholars Bryan Reber and Bruce Berger (2005) explain that “a sub frame is a more specific frame, usually in the form of a claim, which supports a broader master frame” (p. 187).

^5. See Macur (2008a); Araton (2008); Macur (2008g); Clarke (2008e), and Vecsey (2008b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Murray Yang

Michelle Murray Yang is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland. Earning a PhD in rhetoric from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011, her research interests focus on conceptualizations of US-Sino relations in US media and political discourse. She would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their help in preparing this work for publication.