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CHINESE state media highlighted the arrest yesterday by police in Shanghai of the editor in chief and several employees of the influential www.21cbh.com financial news site on allegations of having extorted money from companies.
Those arrested were said to have threatened to publish negative news about them.
The case involving www.21cbh.com, the website for the 21st Century Business Herald, is the latest scandal involving news corruption in China. Financial news managers at state broadcaster China Central Television were placed under police
investigation several weeks ago for alleged corruption.
Many business executives are willing to pay bribes to win a competitive edge and many poorly trained journalists turn to extortion to make extra money, said Shanghai’s Fudan University journalism professor Tong Bing.
“What we truly need is more openness,” he said.
“Then there will be more space for objective, fact-based coverage and the media can supervise each other, reducing such problems.”
In the latest case, the chief editor and a deputy editor of the website, as well as executives from two public relations agencies, were among eight people detained by police in Shanghai, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The financial news site confirmed in a brief online statement that several of its employees had been taken away in a police investigation but did not give details.
Xinhua said that the website management had colluded with public relations agencies to blackmail renowned companies or those seeking to be listed on an exchange by threatening them with negative coverage.
The suspects and their companies profited handsomely from the scheme, trading favourable copy for money or exorbitant advertising contracts, the agency added.
The news site promised to co-operate with the investigation, saying: “We will deal with related matters with a responsible attitude.”
Chinese newspapers, broadcasters and other media are all owned by the state or the Communist Party, but they must be financially self-reliant.
This means that, as long as they work within official guidelines, most can make their own editorial decisions.
This has given rise to low-paid journalists routinely accepting money from companies to attend events or report on them and sometimes to suppress information about scandals.
