CCTV asked to correct news story

An online opinion poll found Wednesday that 90 percent of respondents believe that CCTV should correct a misleading report that said Shanghai students don't have to score nearly as high as their peers in Zhejiang Province to get into the country's best universities.

CCTV 2's daily economic news program reported December 4 that Zhejiang students have to score roughly 100 points higher than Shanghai students on the national college entrance examinations to get admitted into first-tier universities. However, the report left out that the two regions give students different tests with different scoring systems.

The program's host, Shi Xiaonuo, compared the minimum scores that students from both regions needed to get into top universities from 2009 to 2011. In 2009, for example, Zhejiang students needed to get 606 on their exams, while Shanghai students only had to score 471. In 2011, Zhejiang students had to score 571, while locals only needed a 468.

The report failed to mention that the maximum scores differ between regions. During that period, the Shanghai exam had a maximum score of 630, while Zhejiang's was 810.

The State-run CCTV should be held responsible for what it reports to its national audience, said Wang Hongbo, a senior official with the Shanghai Municipal Educational Examinations Authority.

Wang said CCTV never contacted the authority to check its facts, either before or after the report aired. "They never asked what the maximum scores are for Shanghai test takers, or whether it makes any sense to compare the scores from two different regions. They should not have reported it like this," Wang said.

The survey, which was published by the news website Eastday.com, found that only 4.8 percent of the roughly 5,900 respondents thought that the CCTV report was objective.

CCTV did not return phone calls seeking comment Wednesday.

On CCTV2's official microblog, a user called mourikazuha questioned the station's professionalism and urged it to apologize for the misleading report.

The issue of whether students from some regions have an unfair advantage in getting into university was again ignited this month with the story of Zhan Haite. The 15-year-old migrant student refused to go back to her hometown in Jiangxi Province to attend high school after going to school for nine years in Shanghai.

Zhan came under the spotlight after she invited Shanghai residents to debate whether non-locals should have the same educational opportunities that they do.