Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Wednesday condemned a recent wave of sanctions against Chinese business media and journalists over their coverage of the private sector.
Last week, the weekly magazine Business Watch was suspended for a month, while Bao Yueyang (包月陽) was fired on Wednesday as the editor of another business newspaper.
“The free flow of business and financial information is still not a reality in China,” RSF said.
“There is an urgent need for the Propaganda Department, local authorities and both state and private-sector companies to stop obstructing investigative reporting by the business media. We call for the sanctions against Business Watch and Bao Yueyang to be rescinded,” it said.
Business Watch was suspended for a month at the beginning of this month after it published an investigative report in its March issue about the state-owned power company Grid Corp. The reporter had used internal company documents for the report, which Chinese authorities did not appreciate, RSF said.
This was not the first time the Xiamen-based magazine got into trouble over its investigative reporting. Two years ago, it was suspended for two months for an article about Tianjin Mayor Huang Xingguo (黃興國).
In the other case, Bao was removed from his job as editor at the China Economic Times and transferred to another post at the Development Publishing Co following the publication’s coverage of contaminated vaccines in Shanxi Province.
RESTRICTIONS
After wide coverage of the matter since March, the authorities restricted reporting on Chinese Web sites and ordered traditional media to limit themselves to dispatches from state-owned Xinhua news agency, RSF said.
Bao is well known for encouraging his reporters to investigate sensitive issues.
Also recently, Chinese authorities ordered the daily Nanfang Dushi Bao to remove from its Web site an editorial expressing reservations about the philanthropic practices of some Chinese firms, RSF said.
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, as many as 10 foreign and local reporters have been briefly arrested in the past few weeks, RSF reported.
ARRESTS
At least three Japanese journalists and several South Korean journalists were arrested at Dalian and Tianjin during the visit last week of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Four Hong Kong journalists sent to Sichuan Province to cover a corruption story linked to the 2008 earthquake were prevented from working by local officials, who escorted them to a police station, RSF said.
RSF urged US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to raise the issue of press freedom with Chinese diplomats during a human rights dialogue between China and the US that started yesterday.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS