Chinese reporters walk out over editor’s removal

ABOUT 100 Beijing News reporters walked out in protest at this week’s dismissal of the top editor, the latest victim of China’s strict press controls, industry sources said yesterday.

Disgruntled journalists also displayed their anger through a photograph in the paper showing a flock of birds flying through dark skies above the newspaper’s office, with one bird leading. “The sky may not be very clear, but they will still fly into the distance with their mission close to their hearts,” said a note with the picture.

The editor-in-chief of the Beijing News, Yang Bin, was abruptly removed two days ago without any official explanation.

Yesterday’s acts of defiance by journalists were the latest in a long struggle between the Communist Party, which tries to control information, and China’s print media, which wants to attract readers and revenue with bold reporting.

A Beijing editor said propaganda officials singled out the Beijing News for criticism at a December 6 meeting, where it was decided that “city tabloids” like the News should “strengthen Party control” and bow to the wishes of propaganda officials.

In recent years, the stolid Guangming Daily and People’s Daily in Beijing, and other propaganda broadsheets, have turned to new tabloids as profit-makers. In turn, these tabloids have sometimes defied censors by appealing to central patronage.

The Beijing News “committed errors in the orientation of opinion” and was a “recidivist”, officials said, according to the editor who was formally briefed on the meeting.

The editor said propaganda officials criticised the Beijing News’ reporting of the June murder of seven rural protesters by officials in Dingzhou, northern China, as well as relatively sympathetic reports about a migrant worker who killed his foreman and three others after his wages went unpaid.

The Propaganda Department chief, Liu Yunshan, said the News’ problems must be “fundamentally resolved”, said the editor.

While Communist Party officials were reasserting their hold on the tabloid, nearly instantaneous internet reporting of Yang’s sacking and a flurry of online discussions suggested limits to the party’s control.

At the Beijing News a petition circulated denouncing Yang’s dismissal and the handover of controls to more conservative editors from its parent newspaper, the Guangming Daily.