Newspaper reports of food safety scandals: evidence from an online take-out application in China

ABSTRACT

This article provides empirical evidence that marketization or deregulation of newspapers might help improve timely media supervision. Newspaper reports of the food safety scandal of an online take-out application ‘Eleme’ were here used to analyse heterogeneity between the attitudes of politically controlled party newspapers and marketized independent newspapers. OLS regression results indicate that, before official exposure of Eleme’s food safety scandal on World Consumer Rights Day, local independent newspapers showed more supervision and concern about the local potential food safety scandal. However, the government newspapers only followed up after official exposure, and presented attitudes similar to those expressed in marketized newspapers.

KEYWORDS:

• Media control
• food safety
• independent newspaper
• China

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I18
• L82
• O14
• P29

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Newspapers are here divided into those more politically controlled (Ji Guan Bao) and those less politically controlled. For convenience, the former are called ‘government’ newspapers and the latter ‘independent’ newspapers, although both groups are formally controlled by government.

² The selected samples are major independent and government newspapers in Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Sichuan, Liaoning, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Jilin and Shanghai.

³ Eleme means “are you hungry?”.

⁴ The 11 prefectures are Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Suzhou, Haerbin, Fuzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Changchun and Xiamen.

⁵ WiseSearch, based in Hong Kong, is the world’s leading database of published Chinese information.

⁶ Keywords such as supervision, loophole, sanitation, safety, unlicensed, black workshop, black restaurant, hidden trouble, hidden danger, and violation were found and those negative reports were double-checked manually.

⁷ Coastal provinces include Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hebei, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Shandong, Shanghai, Tianjin and Zhejiang.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.