Chinese censor orders journalists to take communist exam

Posted by Trafton Kenney on March 12, 2010 at 1:39 PM

Journalists in China will have to brush up on their communist history if they hope to continue reporting the news. China's print media censor is planning to introduce a new qualification exam for journalists as the government tries to exert further control over news outlets, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday.

Li Dongdong, the deputy director at the General Administration of Press and Publication confirmed on Wednesday that that qualification exam would resemble the test taken by civil servants, and that all aspiring journalists would be required to take it before applying for a reporting job.

Under the new guidelines, the Communist Party's stance on journalism would be required reading for students studying journalism.

All newspaper editors will have to take part in similar training within three or four years. Foreign journalists, however, are not required to take the exam.

"Comrades who are going to be working on journalism's front lines must learn theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics and be taught Marx's view on news, plus media ethics and Communist Party discipline on news and propaganda," Li told the state-run Xinhua News Agency on Monday.

The new measures are a response to the "wake of heightened public discontent over what (Li) called vulgarity, bad taste, and unethical news reporting" by Chinese media, said the Morning Post.

Corruption is one focus of state censors. Beijing TV reporter Zi Beijia was sentenced to a year in prison in 2007 after faking an investigative report on cardboard-filled steamed buns in Beijing. Last year, Farmer's Daily reporter Li Junqi was found guilty of accepting a bribe to cover up a mining accident and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

In other cases, censors have targeted journalists who report news that the government wants kept quiet. Reporter Li Changqing spent three years in prison after covering an outbreak of dengue fever in Fuzhou Province in 2004 which authorities had attempted to cover up. In 2008, Li was awarded the World Association of Newspapers Golden Pen of Press Freedom.

The government recently punished a group of top newspaper editors who published an editorial demanding reforms for China's household registration system.

Chinese media outlets had lately enjoyed more freedom as they began to rely on advertising as well as state funds for revenue. The new ruling by state censor is another setback to press freedom in the communist country

Sources: South China Morning Post, Washington Post, MediaGuardian