China has so far failed to live up to its pledge to ensure full media freedom ahead of the Beijing Olympics, with harassment of foreign reporters still common, a survey showed.
But despite the problems, the situation is better than when before the government relaxed reporting regulations on Jan. 1, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China said.
Of the 163 respondents to the survey, 95 percent said they did not think reporting conditions in China met what they considered international standards.
Forty-three percent of respondents also said there had been an improvement in China's reporting environment since the government moved to relax decades-old foreign press restrictions before the Games.
The survey gathered written responses from reporters with media organizations from more than 24 countries. The majority of respondents, 133, were based in Beijing with the remaining working in Shanghai and four other Chinese cities not specified.
China now allows foreign reporters to travel and report more freely across most of the country in the run-up to next August's Games, but the relaxed rules will expire on Oct. 17 next year.
Foreign journalists had required government permission to report outside their home base -- usually Beijing or Shanghai -- but under the new rules they need only the agreement of the person they are interviewing.
"We welcome the progress that has been made," the group's president, Melinda Liu (
"However we urge the Chinese government to accelerate efforts to eliminate all media restrictions and to ensure appropriate implementation of policies. We're especially concerned by many reports of intimidation of sources.
"A nation where citizens who speak to foreign correspondents face threats, reprisals and even bodily harm does not live up to the world's expectations of an Olympic host," she said.
Problems include violence against foreign reporters covering protests, detention for unauthorized filming and being called into the Foreign Ministry for "criticism" of stories, the group said.
China's own tightly controlled domestic media is not covered by the new rules.
Restrictions on travel to Tibet and the far western region of Xinjiang, where restless minority peoples chaff under Beijing's choke, remain in place too.
"Among the problems they cited was insufficient access to government officials,particularly the nation's top leadership," the group said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS