China Digital Times

China news tagged with: media corruption (36)

• Hush Money Journalism

  

  Caixin, edited by Hu Shuli, reports on media corruption and the recent mining disaster cover-up in Weixian, Hebei:

  Later last year, a dozen journalists were discovered to have taken hush money totaling 2.6 million yuan, according to a Hebei Provincial government report released January 9. Local authorities in Weixian, Hebei Province bribed journalists, including four from national media, to silence a mining accident that occurred July 14, 2008. Crowds of journalists lined up for hush money to be handed out after a local coal mine accident in Shanxi Province Nov. 3, 2008.

  As these cases show, the lure of money continues to dull the consciences of a few journalists. But as for whether only the journalists should be responsible, Professor Zhan Jiang from the Beijing Foreign Studies University said that the brunt of criticism ought to be directed at local government officials.

  Officials in areas with intense mining, such as Hebei and Shanxi, are frequently found attempting to conceal accidents from the public. Professor Zhan said local authorities in mining areas have come to rely on concealing work safety accidents through cutting information off from the public and using public funds for bribes. Zhan says this systemic corruption creates “professional blackmail journalists.”

  » Read more
  • February 4, 2010 4:28 PM

• The Cover-Up Of The Weixian Mining Disaster

  

  ESWN translates a China Youth Daily article about the mining bos paid out 26. million yuan in hush money to reporters covering the deadly accident at his mine in Weixian, Hebei Province:

  On January 20, 2010, when the China Youth Daily reporter arrived at this coal mine almost 30 kilometers away from the Weixian county city, it was snowing hard. The white snow was slowly covering up this blackish abandoned coal mine.

  For the families of the 35 coal mine workers who lost their lives during this mining disaster, their sorrows could not be covered up as quickly. The responsibility of the relevant local leaders who covered up the incident could not be covered up either. And most of all, the scandal of the waves of reporters who showed up after the incident to demand “shut-up” fees must not be covered up.

  On January 9, 2010, the Hebei provincial government reported on the progress of the investigation of the 7.14 mining disaster at the Liajiawa coal mine in Weixian county. At the moment, 48 persons were held responsibility and referred to the judiciary for criminal prosecution. The former Weixian county party secretary Li Hongxing was sentenced to 13 years in jail. The former Weixian county mayor Qi Jianhua was sentenced to 14 years in jail. 18 other persons in Zhangjiakou city and Weixian county were punished according to party and political discipline. Of these, the former Weixian county party publicity department director, its former deputy-director and its former information officer deputy director were expelled from the Party and fired from their jobs.

  On January 20, an old cadre who has been paying attention to this case for a long time told the China Youth Daily reporter: “The relevant officials are being held accountable. Most of the cases have been tried. But why aren’t they going after the reporters who asked for ’shut-up’ fees? Why won’t they even publish the list of those who received ’shut-up’ fees?”

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  • February 1, 2010 10:07 PM

• The Rotten Red Envelope

  

  With the recent sentencing of a journalist for accepting bribes to cover up a mining disaster before the 2008 Olympics, Global Times covers a heated debate over media corruption:

  One after another, participants voiced their concern for the precarious livelihood of the young journalists, especially those working in inland and remote areas.

  “I hope the government can intervene and think of a way to help raise the income of journalists,”said Liu Fang, a second-year student at a graduate journalism program of Beijing Foreign Studies University.

  Liu Yiran next recalled her seven straight hours covering a poisonous gas leak at a chemical plant. Despite suffering a severe headache and numbness in the mouth, she was asked to stay for live coverage by China Central Television.

  “We have no subsidies to pay for these health hazard stories,” she said in a telephone interview after the workshop. Liu’s salary is 2,000 yuan a month after tax. The average GDP per head of Lanzhou residents is 2,130 yuan per month last year.

  “I have to work extremely hard to support myself. I also need to use my own money to maintain good relations with my sources for exclusive stories,” she said.

  “If a company wants to offer me a red envelope with a couple of hundred yuan in cash for me to write a promotional story, I don’t see why I should refuse it.”

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  • January 6, 2010 10:01 PM

• Scribe Gets 16 Years in Mine Accident Coverup

  

  A journalist has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for accepting bribes in the cover-up of a mining disaster in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. From China Daily:

  Li Junqi, former director of the Hebei bureau of Farmers’ Daily, is believed to be the first of the 10 reporters involved in the scandal to receive criminal punishment.

  Thirty-four miners and a rescuer died after a blast ripped through the Lijiawa mine in Yuxian county on July 14, 2008, three weeks before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

  According to local media reports, mine bosses relocated bodies, destroyed evidence and paid the journalists 2.6 million yuan ($380,000) to cover up the disaster, keeping the tragedy from appearing in newspapers for 85 days.

  Following a State Council probe into the accident, the 10 journalists confessed to taking bribes, resulting in the prosecution of 48 local officials.

  The identities of the 10 journalists have not been made public, but reports claim Guan Jian, a Beijing journalist from China Internet Weekly, and Li were among them.

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  • January 5, 2010 9:31 PM

• David Bandurski: Fake Measures to Deal with Real Problems

  

  David Bandurski writes that press accreditation will not solve “the fundamental issue driving media corruption in China.” From China Media Project:

  This winter has brought another of China’s seasonal purges of fakery in its news media. The government is cracking down on “fake news reports,” and it plans to stamp out the problem of “fake journalists” by getting tougher about press accreditation.

  But once again, all of these official measures overlook the fundamental issue driving media corruption in China.

  In an environment where there are too few protections for conscientious journalists, and where the party’s chief prerogative remains the control of information, journalism is about monopoly and privilege rather than professional obligation — and that invites abuse, whether one has an official press card or not.

  » Read more
  • December 9, 2009 9:28 PM

• China to Try 58 Accused of Covering up Mine Deaths

  

  Local reporters and officials are being charged with bribery in a cover-up of a mining disaster in Hebei just before the 2008 Olympics. From AP:

  Officials in Hebei province’s Yuxian county paid journalists a total of 2.6 million yuan ($380,000) not to report the July 14, 2008, accident, in which 34 miners and one rescuer were killed, the China Daily said.

  In addition to bribing reporters, officials silenced relatives of the dead with large compensation payments and threats of retribution if they talked, the paper said. The measures managed to keep the accident silent for 85 days, the paper said, without saying how it eventually became known.

  It’s fairly common for officials to pay such bribes to keep higher ranking leaders from finding out about disasters and to avoid being fired or handed demerits. Often the payments are disguised as advertising buys or subscription fees.

  Yuxian officials had even more reason to keep the accident silent because it struck just three weeks before the Beijing Olympic Games in the midst of a national safety campaign, when the central government was bent on painting only the most positive picture of China to the world.

  » Read more
  • November 30, 2009 12:11 PM

• Should Journalists be Tried for Official Bribery in China?

  

  China Media Project looks at the trial of Fu Hua, a journalist in China, to question the role of employees of the official media and whether they should be held to the same legal standards as government employees:

  The scope and reach of the criminal offense of bribery (受贿罪) has never been clear in China. But the lines become even murkier when the charge is applied to one of the country’s most nebulous professions: journalism. Are Chinese journalists “government officials” or “state personnel” to whom stiffer penalties should apply? Or are they performing ordinary service jobs outside the purview of the Criminal Law on bribery involving state officials?

  These questions, which we saw in the Meng Huaihu (孟怀虎) case two years ago, have been replayed this month in the trial of Fu Hua (傅桦), a former reporter for Shanghai’s China Business News. They concern us here because they touch on more fundamental questions about press freedom, the role of journalism and journalists in China, and related issues such as the need (as some say) for a press law that might clear up ambiguities about journalists’ rights and obligations.

  » Read more
  • May 25, 2009 8:58 PM

• Dai Xiaojun: I Wanted to Show People the Dark Side

  

  From the Economic Observer Online:

  Despite his short stature and small frame, 42-year old Dai Xiaojun exuded an air of agility and strength that he cultivated through nine years of service in the army.

  With that now behind him, he describes himself as a shutterbug, a journalist, or one who records life.

  He has worked for three publications, the latest being the West Times, a weekly mainland newspaper covering the development of western China.

  But none of his previous work made him known to nearly so many people as his most recent: When a batch of both real and fraudulent journalists swarmed the site of a fatal Shanxi mining accident that occurred on September 20, demanding hush money from the mining company, Dai photographed the entire scene. His photographs circulated around the internet, creating an instant scandal.

  But along with story’s fame came trouble. The West Times denied it employed Dai, claiming that he was a correspondent without a labor contract. Threatening calls came one after another. Netizens mocked it as a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

  This time, local reporters were silent on Dai’s behalf, while their peers in other provinces applauded his bravery.

  But the West Times’ statement about Dai cast a shadow over his identity, and the public began questioning his intentions. Was he also a blackmailer in the guise of a journalist? Did he expose the whole thing because he failed to get the money he demanded?

  The EO interviewed Dai on November 4th at the Guofang Hotel in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi.

  » Read more
  • November 23, 2008 12:40 AM

• The Interview With Dai Xiaojun

  

  ESWN translates an interview with journalist Dai Xiaojun, who exposed the cover-up of a mining accident after reporters demanded hush money from the mine boss, and since then has received numerous threatening phone calls:

  Q. Where are the threatening calls coming from?
  A. I suspect that there are coming from the coal mine as well as the fake reporters who have been exposed but not investigated yet.

  Q. Are you sorry? Does your family understand?
  A. I am forty-two years old and I have only done this one thing. Now that I made my choice, I cannot worry about the other consequences. My wife is frequently complaining at home. In principle, she supports me. My father passed away early in life. My mother has cancer and she is not feeling well. When she heard about what happened, she touched my face with her hand and let the tears come down: “Child, I understand you. You do as you think, but please be careful.” Actually, I should have known that it could be painful when I exposed the “gag fee” scandal. But if I “gagged” myself, I would be unhappy the rest of my life.

  Q. Was this the first time that you come across a case of “gag fees”?
  A. This is absolutely true. At just past 3pm on September 25, I received a telephone call from a veteran Shanxi reporter. He said that he was attending a conference in Pingyao and a villager called to say that there were many reporters lining up to collect “gag fees” at the Huobao Ganhe coal mine. Pingyao is close to Hongdong and so he was ready to go over there. But since he did not have a camera, he asked me to hurry over there with my camera. I did not have a car, but my blogger friend “Shanxi Podcast” has a car. So we went together. We arrived in front of the coal mine at around 7pm. It was drizzling and pitch dark out there.

  See also “Reporter disputes initial findings in the ‘gag fee’ case” from China Media Project.

  » Read more
  • November 5, 2008 10:18 AM

• China Journalists Demand “Hush Money” at Coal Mine

  

  A mining accident, in which one miner was killed, didn’t get reported in the Chinese media after reporters, and scam artists posing as reporters, received hush money from the mine owner, according to a recent report in Beijing News. Reuters reports:

  The mine did not report the death to the local government in northern Shanxi province when the accident happened in September, the Beijing News said. The owner was fined 8,000 yuan ($1,170).

  “Around 40 or 50 ‘journalists’ came here for money,” the newspaper quoted an official at the mine as saying. They demanded sums of up to 10,000 yuan for not publicizing the death.

  China’s coal mines are the world’s most dangerous, killing nearly 3,800 people last year, as high demand for energy from a booming economy pushes managers to cut safety corners.

  Scams involving journalists and people posing as journalists to demand hush money are common in China.

  The case last year of newspaper employee Lan Chengzhang, who was beaten to death at a local mine, highlighted the issues of illegal mines and media corruption in media discussions. Read CDT’s coverage of the case.

  » Read more
  • October 28, 2008 10:21 AM

• Dark Journalism

  

  “Censorship isn’t the only thing wrong with Chinese reporting. The other one is corruption” Gady A. Epstein reports in the Forbes:

  Zhou Jianguo and a colleague, flying the flag of a Chinese daily newspaper, drove for hours into the mountains to get to a mine accident that killed two during the May 31 weekend in Jingle County in the coal-rich heartland of Shanxi Province, southwest of Beijing. It had taken enterprising journalism to get to this story. At the end of a long day they were set to march up the stairs of a dilapidated concrete government building to confront a county work-safety official about the accident.

  But that’s where the reporting stopped. No story about the accident ever appeared in the paper, the Shanxi Legal Daily, or in any other news outlet. The newspaper denies employing anyone named Zhou Jianguo. Zhou and his colleague refused to allow a FORBES reporter to observe the encounter with the work-safety official. When their ten-minute meeting was over, the two men and the official, a man addressed as Director Li, declined to say what they had discussed.

  What happened in that brief encounter that could make a fatal mine accident magically disappear? “Black journalism,” according to our guide on the scene, a man known only as Old Zhao, a self-described businessman and journalist who arranged our meeting with the pair of reporters. Before going up to Director Li’s office, the two younger men had huddled with Old Zhao, who then bluntly explained the reason FORBES couldn’t go into the meeting. With a foreigner present, “it would be impossible for Li to pay them.”

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  • July 9, 2008 1:27 PM

• The Most Awesome Fake Reporter In History – ESWN

  

  Fake reporters are not new in China, but here is the most awesome fake reporter in history. From People’s net, translated by ESWN:
  
  

  Fake reporters are rampant in the city of Yuncheng, Shanxi province. On August 4, inspectors at the Tonghua toll booth on state highway 209 in Wanrong county, Yuncheng city found 19 fake reporters during a three-hour period. They took away more than 20 press cards that were forged. In less than a month’s time, the Yuncheng Cultural Publishing Bureau caught more than 30 fake reporters. [Full Text]

  Read QQ runs interactive feature page on the problem of “fake reporters” in China

  See also the Chinese original report
  
  

  » Read more
  • September 5, 2007 12:50 PM

• Cash for Journalists Skews Chinese Media – Jamil Anderlini and Mure Dickie

  

  From Financial Times:

  HSBC and the China Charity Foundation celebrated a decade of working together last month, bringing in the global bank’s chairman and renting a room in the Great Hall of the People . Organisers of the event extended the charity to Chinese reporters: donating Rmb200 ($26.40, ‚Ǩ19.30, ¬£13) to each of those who attended, according to people present.

  Such payments – called “transport money” by public relations firms – are a ubiquitous feature of media events in China, but one critics say skews coverage in an increasingly competitive Chinese news market. “It’s awful. It’s an embarrassment for Chinese journalism‚Äâ.‚Äâ.‚Äâ. and it’s corruption,” says Ying Chan, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong . “It’s not that journalists endorse this – people live with it knowing it is wrong.” [Full Text]
  
  

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  • August 2, 2007 2:18 PM

• The Art Media Hustle

  

  Last month, a gallery worker on Beijing’s East Side sent out a press release for a contemporary art exhibit. The local art media soon came fishing for soft ads. Here the gallerist writes in to share his encounters. The state-backed outlets he mentions appear to have grown symbiotically alongside mainstream auction houses, collectors’ web sites and commercial galleries. Good news here is, no one got killed.

  Note: The identities of the “journalists” involved have not been independently verified. Their names and other specifics have been omitted at the gallerist’s request:

  About one month before the exhibition opened, I blanketed Beijing media
  with a press release and received a couple of interesting responses.

  First was a call from Art Market (Ëâ∫ÊúØÂ∏ÇÂú∫) magazine – artmarket.cc – who wanted us to take out an ad for their next issue. Though I didn’t entertain the idea even for a second, I did ask them to send a copy of the mag and a price sheet. Basically, it is all soft ads. The contents page doesn’t pop up until page 26 and according to the price list, every one of the monthly’s 200-odd pages is for sale:

  The cost for the cover is 40,000 kuai, which includes four pages of content. One page of content costs 4,000 kuai.

  » Read more
  • May 15, 2007 5:48 AM

• China Sentences Fake Reporter to Life in Prison for Bribery

  

  From AP via SanDiego.com:

  A court sentenced a man to life in prison Wednesday for taking nearly $500,000 in bribes while posing as a reporter – and sometimes a top editor – for the Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily.

  Liu Yonghong had promised low-level officials outside Beijing that he could help them get promotions or work transfers by delivering their bribes to top leaders in the capital, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

  It is not unusual in China for reporters to make deals to write positive stories, or to suppress negative news, in return for bribes or promises to buy advertising.[Full Text]

  -Also read CDT’s coverage on the controversial stories of reporter Lan Chenzhang

  » Read more
  • May 9, 2007 8:14 PM

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