Reporter almost loses job for reporting pricey smokes
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, July 6, 2012
Since its inception, weibo, China's twitter-like service, has been on the frontline in the battle against corruption.
Online vigilantes and reporters search for tell-tale signs of official graft and expose them on weibo. Their revelations often cause a stir and compel ombudsmen to take action. Several officials have fallen from grace this way. The most famous case is that of Zhou Jiugeng, an ex-official of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province.
At a meeting in 2008, he was pictured smoking a luxury brand of cigarettes far beyond the means of one living only on his civil servant's salary. That online expose led to Zhou being sacked from his job and later convicted of taking bribes. While Zhou is doing time, he must be mourning his bad luck, for recently the appearance of the same exorbitantly priced cigarettes at an official conference claimed its next victim. Not an official this time, but the journalist who broke the story. The reporter was disciplined.
Shi Junrong, a reporter with Shaanxi-based Xi'an Evening News, was suspended from his job on June 29 after his report was said to have given a bad name to Dali County, Shaanxi Province. Shi got his story idea from a photo posted on Dali's government website. It was supposed to depict a feel-good visit the county's Party chief paid to some impoverished local cadres. But the good ambience was spoiled by a pack of pricey cigarettes on the meeting table.
It was a bad touch for this occasion, to be sure, and the picture naturally got the attention of vigilantes and reporters like Shi. Yet after his story was published on June 28, trouble quickly followed. Two days later, Shi tweeted in his personal weibo that he was suspended because of the report, and apologized for his "professional lapses" in reporting.
Shi's so-called "professional lapses" are, according to official accounts, his failure to travel to Dali in person to get the story. He made a couple of phone calls to confirm the news with Dali's publicity chief, who told him the cigarettes were prepared by a village cadre to show hospitality to visiting county officials. Furthermore, they were a personal gift from this particular cadre's fellow ex-serviceman, Sun Yongli, the publicity chief, said.
Who lied?
In a word, what Sun was trying her best to say was that the cigarettes were not bribes and were not bought at the public's expense. The village cadre, however, said the cigarettes were a gift from his brother-in-law, a wealthy property developer. Unless they were talking about the same person, at least one of them was telling lies. Sun also apparently slipped up in saying there were only two or three cigarettes left in the packet. No politically savvy person would risk the price of such parsimony toward his superiors.
All these half-baked explanations make the charge that Shi wasn't following the right reporting procedures all the more dubious and smack of retribution. Many media professionals and even senior publicity cadres have rallied to Shi's defense. For instance, Nong Tao, an official with the General Administration of Press and Publication, said Shi's treatment was an appalling abuse of local power, rather than punishment for his occupational faux pas.
Fortunately, Shi was reinstated on Wednesday thanks to the tide of online sympathy and support. But the public will not be appeased without an apology to the wronged reporter and a serious investigation into the episode, including whether the cigarettes were really a personal gift. Many vigilantes suspected otherwise, for if they really were a gift, why the fuss to go to great lengths to punish Shi for his factual reporting?
Let law rule
In Nanjing, the authorities didn't suppress the expose about Zhou's public extravagance or rush to defend him. They let the law run its course. Perhaps they already understand silencing "troublemaking" reporters will not quell criticism of government. On the contrary, it will fuel it. It appears that in some localities, respect for the media's work and press freedom are still elusive.
Dali's officials are not only slow in internalizing some principles of civilized society, but they are also slow in learning to outwit critics and deflect public scrutiny.
As the Chinese saying goes, while the priest climbs one post, the devil climbs 10. Many corrupt cadres have learned the lesson from Zhou's downfall, and whenever they want to light up at meetings, they either scatter expensive cigarettes all over the table, or stuff them into packets of cheaper brands to hide evidence of their excesses from the public. Which means, Dali's politicians might be just among the few unlucky ones to be singled out, while those who exercise prudence in public still wallow in their ill-gotten gains.
It is satisfying to catch and bring down a few corrupt officials through weibo, but the limits of online war on graft are obvious - its victories are no more than accidental.
When officials fill a plain, unlabeled bottle with Lafite wine, hide their Patek Philippe wristwatches under long cuffs and rip the Gucci label from their bags, sleaze will become harder to detect.
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