China Jails Five Journalists for Taking Bribes
From the Times of India:
A Beijing reporter has been sent to jail for 13 years while four other journalists in central China’s Shanxi province have been awarded jail sentences for nine to 12 months. All of them have been charged with taking bribes.
The decisions come soon after another court verdict giving three years jail sentence to Chen Daojun, a freelance journalist who reported on a people’s demonstration against the establishment of a chemical plant in Sichuan. He was accused of “inciting subversion of state power.”
Jail sentences are not uncommon for journalists tackling controversial issues like mine disasters and people’s demonstrations in China. In its recent report, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers cited large scale imprisonment of journalists in China as one of the challenges faced by the journalism profession worldwide… Official sources said (Beijing reporter Guo Huaimian) received 400,000 yuan by a medical doctor Zhang Puyi, who wanted to be transferred from a county-level city hospital in Jilin province to the provincial capital Changchun… In Shanxi, four journalists and an alleged impersonator have been sent to jail for taking bribes from a mine owner, who wanted them to suppress news of the death of a workers due to suffocation… The journalists have also been banned from perusing the profession for life, the official media said without naming the newspapers for which they worked.
