Article,
Blackmailing By Journalists In China Seen As 'Frequent'
Washington Post, (20070125)see moss!.
Abstract
SHENZHEN, China -- At 9 p.m. in a dark Shenzhen parking lot, Bai Xiuyu
handed over a plain brown envelope containing 15,000 Chinese yuan,
the equivalent of nearly $2,000, in what was supposed to be a discreet
blackmail payment to a local reporter.
Hidden in Bai's car, Gou Hua, Shenzhen bureau chief for the Southern
Metropolitan Daily, watched the scene unfold and recorded the transaction
with his cellphone camera. His interest was more than journalistic;
the reporter receiving the payoff was Zhou Yu, a 29-year-old newcomer
to Gou's own bureau.
To his consternation, what Gou saw the evening of Sept. 21 was another
instance of the blackmail journalism metastasizing through China's
news media. Bai's money was supposed to buy silence on alleged wrongdoing
at her health clinic in this southern Chinese city. But more generally,
journalists and officials say, Chinese reporters are demanding such
hush money with increasing regularity from businesses and government
agencies in exchange for the withholding of unfavorable news.
"It's very, very frequent," said Ma Yunlong, an editor whose newspaper
exposed an instance of extravagant extortion in central Henan province
in 2005. Ma said the case involved 480 reporters and others pretending
to be reporters who asked for "shut-up fees" to keep news of a mine
flood out of the public eye.
In many ways, blackmail journalism grew naturally out of a system
in which Communist Party censors control the news rigorously, barring
reports that could be seen as unfavorable to the party or contrary
to the government's political goals. If the ruling party distorts
the news for political reasons, blackmailing reporters have concluded,
why wouldn't they do it themselves for financial reasons?
In addition, local party officials, long used to manipulating information,
have been complicit in the payoff system when it suits their needs.
In the everybody-does-it atmosphere, even non-reporters have found
ways to get in on the take by posing as journalists.
After the August 2005 mine disaster, for instance, reporters and their
friends in Henan province dispatched a flurry of cellphone messages
as soon as they heard the news -- not because they were eager to
report on it, but because they knew local officials would be eager
to hush it up.
By the time Fan Youfeng of the Henan Business News arrived at the
mine, in a village in Jiliao county, local officials said they had
already given money to so many reporters and phony reporters that
the coffers were dry. But still more people showed up, Fan wrote,
and the officials sought more cash, pressing the mine owners to chip
in.
Journalists and poseurs lined up to get their handouts, he said, with
some pushing and jumping the queue. Over several days, the extortionists
carried away 200,000 yuan, or more than $25,000, he reported, quoting
officials and a list signed by those who got the cash.
Encouraged by Ma, his editor, Fan wrote a story for the Henan Business
News about what had happened. It was the first open discussion of
what had become a widespread if secretive practice, Ma said with
a note of pride.
As a result, however, an official from the central government propaganda
department visited from Beijing and accused Ma of publishing an "inappropriate"
and "false" story. The newspaper was suspended for a month, Ma was
forced to retire and Fan was reprimanded, Ma said. The death toll
from the mine disaster was never reported, he added.
"This kind of thing has an important impact on the success of local
officials," Ma explained, "so they always want to cover it up."
More recently, some blackmail targets have started striking back.
More than 40 people were arrested last month in Shanxi province on
charges of impersonating reporters and trying to extort money from
local officials and business owners, according to the official New
China News Agency.
"People can't help but ask, 'Why are these fake reporters so savage?'
" the news agency said in a Dec. 12 editorial.
Zhou Yu, a slight man with sharp gestures and a ring in his left earlobe,
said the lure of money was not what motivated him to take Bai's payoff
envelope that evening in Shenzhen. "I was trying to help," he said
in an interview. "It was out of friendship."
Zhou said Bai, a physician, had telephoned him earlier in the day
asking for advice because, she said, two reporters had warned her
they were about to write a story accusing her Jianmin Clinic of providing
services it was not certified to perform, including abortions. Bai
turned to him, Zhou explained, because a year earlier he had written
what he described as a critical but objective story about her clinic.
"If I can help a friend, I think I should help," he said.
The two reporters who went to Bai's office were Hua Kejian of the
Nanfang Daily and Liang Yongjian of Zhou's own Southern Metropolitan
Daily, both owned by the prestigious Nanfang publishing house based
in nearby Guangzhou, according to Zhou and others involved. A third
reporter, Song Yi of the Yangcheng Evening News, joined the pair
later in the day, they said.
"Their motive was very apparent," Zhou said.
After contacting the reporters, Zhou told Bai she would have to come
up with 15,000 yuan to buy silence for her clinic, according to Zhou
and the other sources. Zhou said he did not plan to pocket any of
the money himself, only to pass it along to the other reporters.
"I thought this would be okay with my newspaper," he added, "because
I was just a go-between."
The sum demanded was high, even for a boomtown such as Shenzhen. Most
blackmail payouts to reporters are counted in the hundreds of yuan,
according to Chinese reporters and editors. Acting on the advice
of another acquaintance, therefore, Bai sent a cellphone message
to Zhou complaining that the price was unreasonable. But Zhou responded
that there was no way to reduce it, Bai's acquaintance said in an
interview.
Zhou told Bai the cash should be divided into three packets of 5,000
yuan each and arranged for the handover to take place in the parking
lot near his bureau on a leafy boulevard in central Shenzhen, according
to several people involved.
At that point, Gou, the bureau chief, received a troubling telephone
call. The acquaintance of Bai's, outraged at the amount demanded
by Zhou, called to say Gou's reporters were involved in a blackmail
scheme and that, as bureau chief, he should do something about it,
according to Gou and the acquaintance, who described his role on
condition of anonymity.
Äs soon as I heard about it," Gou said in an interview, "I wanted
to verify what was going on."
Gou, 32, arranged with Bai to be in her car that evening as a witness.
When Bai got out of her car and approached Zhou, the two exchanged
pleasantries for several minutes, and Zhou patted her on the shoulder.
But when Zhou looked inside the envelope, he complained because she
had not divided the cash into three bundles as requested, according
to Zhou and others.
Zhou, in the interview, said he showed up alone to collect the money
because the three other reporters were busy and he wanted to do them
a favor. Gou, the bureau chief, said that ä lot is unclear" about
what was really going on. In any case, Gou got out of the car after
taking the photographs and confronted Zhou, who promptly handed the
envelope back to Bai.
Returning the money was not enough, Gou said, and ordered Zhou to
follow him to the office. Once inside, Gou started writing a memo
about what had occurred and demanded to see Liang, the other reporter
from his paper.
Liang reported to Gou's office looking embarrassed, witnesses said.
"There's nothing wrong with my reporting," he maintained, according
to the witnesses. For his part, Zhou said that the ringleader was
Nanfang Daily's Hua Kejian and that he himself was only trying to
help Bai get through a difficult time.
Unmoved, Gou fired Zhou. Liang was spared for lack of evidence, he
said, and continues to work in the bureau. Hua Kejian and Song Yi
also remain at their jobs.
At the bureau's regular weekly meeting on Oct. 10, Gou told his staff
that the Zhou Yu case was a "shame" for himself, the bureau and the
newspaper, besmirching its "glorious history," according to a record
of the meeting.
After investigating, Gou told his reporters that he was convinced
this was a unique case; he threatened to fire any others caught engaging
in such conduct. "If anyone feels he can only make a living by blackmailing
people, he should leave," Gou said, according to the record. "This
is not the place for you."
But he also acknowledged that Shenzhen has an ünhealthy environment"
in which such corruption can flourish. One of his own reporters has
asked him repeatedly to withhold certain news, he complained.
Shenzhen journalists said that, in addition to blackmailing, reporters
and editors regularly receive payments from businessmen and officials
in exchange for publication of favorable articles. Instances range
from the 300,000 yuan paid to a newspaper recently for an article
praising Shenzhen's city government to "red envelopes" containing
"transportation money" for reporters who show up at news conferences.
The practice is encouraged, they added, by a system in which reporters
are also responsible for selling advertising and subscriptions to
the institutions and businesses they cover.
The payoffs have become so accepted that a reporter who showed up
this month at a news conference called by an Internet software company
here complained loudly and walked out when he discovered he would
be given only a bottle of mineral water, according to other reporters
present.
"I would say there are problems in the Chinese media world," one of
them commented.
Zhou, meanwhile, said he feels betrayed by Bai for denouncing him
to his boss. He no longer has any contact with his former colleagues
Liang, Hua and Song, he said. His girlfriend seems to be the only
one who believes his version of what happened that evening, he complained.
His dreams of being a great journalist have dimmed, he added, and
now he plans to start a trading company.
"I'm not thinking of the news business anymore," he said, smiling.
"This had too much of an impact on me."
Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.
