“I think my actions … have harmed the national interest. What I have done was very wrong. I seriously and earnestly accept to learn a lesson and plead guilty,” said Chinese journalist Gao Yu during a televised confession on the state-run channel CCTV in May 2014.
Coverage of protests and riots. Revelations of official corruption and graft. Major natural disasters. Investigations into deplorable living conditions. These are some of the important issues journalists cover in their role as the Fourth Estate.
The Chinese microblogging site Weibo has a huge following, with around 100 million users posting every day. For those living in China, one of CPJ’s 10 most censored countries, the social network offers the chance to discuss and share news that is often blocked in mainstream outlets.
When journalists at the Guangdong-based Southern Weekly found that their 2013 new year editorial had been changed, without their knowledge, to exalt the virtues of the Communist Party, they took their outrage to the Chinese microblogging site Weibo.
The case of Li Xin, a journalist who disappeared in Thailand in January after telling the international press in November he had fled China after being forced to work for years as a government informant, has shed light on the pressures some journalists face to provide information to the authorities.
Typically, news organizations like to promote original reporting. When an outlet covers a breaking news event at the time and from the place where the event is happening, they want their audience to know. However, for Chinese commercial media that covered this weekend’s presidential election in Taiwan, this was apparently not the case.
China’s journalists and bloggers, already under threat of persecution, face new risks from November 1, when amendments to the country’s criminal law come into effect. Under the amendment, passed in August by legislative body the National People’s Congress, those convicted of spreading false news about disasters or epidemics will face harsh penalties.
From being followed by plain clothes policemen to being locked in a hotel conference room, the life of an international journalist in China comes with its challenges. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China released details on September 13 of six cases of members being harassed by authorities between March and August this year.
The day after a lavish military parade was held in Beijing on September 3 to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and China’s role in defeating Japan, three major Chinese newspapers–Southern Weekend, Southern Metropolis, and Southern Daily–published pages of photographs and articles brimming with nationalist sentiment. The papers all belong…