Now that the 2008 Olympic Games are less than one year away, foreign reporters are beginning to descend on Beijing (more than 20,000 will cover the events in August).

Only the world's largest, wealthiest media outlets maintain permanent bureaus here. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Agence France-Presse, the Times of London, etc. Aside from the men and women who run those bureaus - known as 'China hands' for their intimate knowledge of Sino affairs - foreign reporters assigned to Beijing must 'parachute' in and quickly take stock of the capital's Olympic preparations.

Their stories, which appear in newspapers daily, follow a certain formula: cab ride into Beijing - high-level interview - night at a four-star hotel - trip to Tian'anmen Square. On the one hand, these are experienced, talented newshounds - they deliver the facts and figures we readers crave, and the bare-bones news we need to know.

But, in terms of real truth-seeking, 48 hours is not enough - it's a whirlwind tour. Lacking both depth and context, the quick-hit narratives penned by parachuting foreign reporters may lead readers astray. Some sensationalize Beijing's air pollution problem, for example.

"During a recent visit to Beijing," one American journalist recalled, "I was struck by how gray and dark it was in the morning when I opened the draperies in my hotel room. It must be raining, I thought. But there was no moisture on the pavement. Those were not rain clouds. That was pollution. You feel it in your throat as you hail a taxi upon arriving at the airport; you smell it on your clothes at the end of a long day in Beijing."

Most newcomers (foreign and Chinese) react to the city's smog that way - I know I did. Beijingers don't. By and large, they wake up ready to face pollution. By and large, they believe the quality of Beijing's air is improving. By and large, they're confident gritty skies won't ruin the 2008 Olympics.

Beijingers' comparative indifference to smog hasn't blown it away. The city must continue coming to grips with a serious pollution problem. However, local attitudes and perspectives deserve 'western' readers' attention. Foreign journalists need only to listen.

Many visiting reporters blaze trails for tourists. 'Headed to Beijing in August 2008?' they ask. 'Here's what to expect.'

"The smog and traffic are what get to you on a first drive into Beijing. That, and a suspicion that the international airport's foreign exchange counter has given you a raw deal and that the man who has talked you into taking his limousine taxi is going to rip you off. On a good day, it might take up to an hour to get into the heart of the city at Tiananmen Square along the Avenue of Everlasting Peace," another American journalist warned.

Such descriptions are relatively harmless. The journalist quoted above, for example, neither understands nor purports to understand the myriad social and economic currents coursing through Olympic Beijing. Neither does this Bay-Area T.V. news reporter (excerpt from her blog):

"June 26th - Up at 5 a.m. Off to the Forbidden City. It already has to be 80 or 90 degrees outside. No breeze. Humid and completely smogged in. No one was at the gates to the Forbidden City when we arrived and it was a quite an experience to have the huge plaza to ourselves. By 7 a.m. the Chinese tourists start to arrive. We had a great time trying to do interviews with our interpreter. Lots of laughs and a lot of people who were very shy of the camera. On the other hand, a lot of people asked to take their picture with me. I think the combination of my blonde hair and the NBC microphone made me a tourist attraction as well. I felt a bit like the Giant Panda at the Zoo."

It's when 'parachuting' journalists stray from hands-on reporting that formulaic rhetoric and questionable punch-lines sneak in.

"There may be times next year when China will appear like a nervous host who hopes party guests will leave without staying too late or causing trouble," opined a Canadian sports-writer last year, offering little evidence to back up that claim.

Although 2008 will bring some of the world's best reporters to China, I've read stories dispatched by journalists here that read as if they were composed on airplane tray tables half-way to Beijing - 'city sweeps human rights and environmental abuses under the proverbial carpet as chivalrous western media arrive to cover civilizing Olympic Games.'

According to USA Today, Chinese officials are "evicting tenants to make room for visitors, shutting down factories to reduce pollution, plotting to control weather, staging rallies to teach English and ordering Beijing's brusque citizens to mind their manners. Whatever it takes, the organizers of the Beijing Olympics are determined to put on the grandest Games ever...and make them a symbol of the communist nation's arrival as a global economic power."

The newspaper's assessment may be dead on - less than a 'China hand' myself, I'm not one to argue. But loaded phrasing ('plotting,' 'staging,' 'ordering,' 'whatever it takes') - repeated across publications - bespeaks lazy reporting.

With regard to the Chinese government, in particular, one quick-hit narrative struck a decidedly patronizing tone.

"China and its 1.3 billion prospective soft-drink and credit-card consumers will open themselves to the world in a way that the Chinese government might not yet fully comprehend," a visiting American journalist wrote. "International corporations are salivating at the thought, which is, of course, the main reason China won the right to host these Olympics. For perhaps the first time in its history...Chinese leaders will be unable to control the message being sent from their borders. Until now, various Western news bureaus have butted heads with the Chinese thought police. But this summer, thousands of foreign journalists from every spot on the globe will demand to play by their rules, not China's."

The August arrival of a feisty world press may give Beijing some trouble. Still, I'd call the argument quoted above naive. China may be a developing country, but the men and women running Beijing's Olympics aren't dumb. They've been prepping for nearly a decade.

As the Games approach, more reporters will 'parachute' into Beijing. Weighed downed by interpreters, jet-lag and deadlines, they'll be hard-pressed to deliver cutting cultural commentary. One U.S. journalist assigned to cover August's Olympics put it this way:

"If the Games are a facade, a Potemkin village, how would I know? If I had gone to the Olympics in Mexico City, I might not have known about the students shot in the Tlatelolco protests 10 days earlier until I read about them in a history book. People still don't agree on whether a few hundred or thousands of people were killed. I doubt I could have sorted out the details in the hours between the 100-butterfly heats and the balance-beam finals."

It's not only visiting reporters who find themselves hemmed in by constraints and restrictions. Even the 'free world's' Beijing bureaus will have their 'China hands' full this summer. Already, admirable but time-strapped foreign correspondents ditch out on neighborhood interviews to cover important press conferences. When your beat is a country 1.3 billion strong...

"Covering China is like trying to drink from a fire hose gushing at full blast," said Tim Johnson, China correspondent for the McClatchy Company, which owns newspapers like the Kansas City Star, Sacramento Bee and Tacoma's News Tribune. "I simply can't keep up with all that I would like to. And I'm just speaking about the combination of English language media, press conferences, academic seminars and other events around town."

Then there are government-imposed press regulations. Since December 2006, foreign correspondents have been free to interview any and all persons or organizations inside the country. Nevertheless, more than 180 reporters working here say they've faced interference, according to a survey recently conducted by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China.

All this is not to say that stories and columns flowing back to Seattle from Beijing are in general phony, or incomplete. Only that affairs here ahead of the Olympics - economic, cultural, environmental, athletic - are complex.

You already turn a critical eye on Xinhua (government-sponsored) news reports. Why? Because Chinese reporters are censored. Because Xinhua media may bow before a political agenda. So the next time you read a snappy 'western' story with a Beijing byline, proceed with caution. Foreign journalists face obstacles as well. Foreign journalists are capable of formulaic prose too.

(Note: Compare "Face-lifting Beijing stops to retrieve its ancient flavor" (Xinhua) and "A new Beijing is rising" (Vancouver Sun) . Both stories concern residential construction and demolition here. Neither author seems to have fabricated statistics. Neither seems to have faked interviews. And yet, the two stories convey very different messages. It just goes to show - there's room for multiple perspectives in Olympic Beijing.)

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