11. 11. 2011

China Tightens Reporting Rules for Journalists

Beijing, November 11, 2011. (NY Times) - Chinese authorities this week announced new and tighter regulations governing journalists, one of several recent actions aimed at controlling rumors and diluting the influence of the nation's rapidly growing microblogs.

In a statement posted on its Web site on Thursday, the General Administration of Press and Publications barred reporters from directly including unverified information from the Internet or mobile telephone messages in news articles.

The new rules also require journalists to produce at least two sources for any "critical" news reports and to personally conduct interviews when gathering information.

False reports must be followed by corrections and apologies, the statement said, and serious violations could lead to the suspension or even revocation of a news outlet's government-issued license.

"False reports not only seriously hurt the interests of the parties involved, but also seriously undermine the credibility of the news media, or even seriously affect the social and economic order," the agency stated in a question-and-answer article released by the state news agency Xinhua.

Since 2010, the press administration said, more than one in five of its investigations of "illegal news publishing" involved false reports.

Senior Communist Party leaders, led by the Politburo member and propaganda chief Li Changchun, have expressed rising concern in recent months about the difficulty of squelching false rumors and incendiary statements on China's booming microblogs, which reach hundreds of millions of Internet users.

Some microblogs have tasked teams of employees to hunt down and fact-check rumors, and at least a few people who have posted false reports have been suspended from the services.

Last month's annual meeting of the Communist Party's leadership, which focused on increasing China's cultural reach, produced new calls for increased supervision of journalism and the Internet.

The authorities appear particularly concerned about fast-spreading rumors of corruption or abuse of authority by government officials, a frequent topic on the Twitter-like microblogs.

The immediate impact of the new rules was not clear, but their effect may be felt most at local or regional news outlets where journalists may be less experienced and government supervision can be less precise.

Journalists at some prominent news organizations in Beijing said that rumors and other unverified information already are checked for accuracy before publication.