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Beijing ends edgy news programmes for their ‘particularly vile impact’

BEIJING — Chinese authorities have shut down several edgy news programmes run by major Web portals in the latest round of efforts to restrict original reporting of political and social news.

BEIJING — Chinese authorities have shut down several edgy news programmes run by major Web portals in the latest round of efforts to restrict original reporting of political and social news.

Citing violation of rules, China’s Internet regulator has ordered news portals of Sina, Sohu, Netease and iFeng to end their news programmes known for more freewheeling coverage of political and social news, reported the state-run Beijing News over the weekend.

The programmes “uploaded and published a large number of news reports gathered and edited by themselves”, causing “particularly vile impact”, it said, citing an unnamed official with the department. The sites are also facing fines, added the official.

The move is the latest step in President Xi Jinping’s China that aims to have complete control over the dissemination of news. It comes four months after Mr Xi made a highly publicised tour of the three pillars of Chinese party-state propaganda — Xinhua news agency, the People’s Daily newspaper, and China Central Television — emphasising the need to put fealty to the party above all else.

By law, Chinese news sites are allowed to carry only political news reports from state media controlled by party committees and governments. Despite the clear rules against news sites having their own news gathering teams, major news sites — driven partly by commercial interests and partly by their journalistic pursuits — have formed their own editorial staff.

In the past few years, the news sites have hired veteran investigative journalists displaced from traditional media that have come under tighter controls, and those journalists — despite working without accreditation — have produced long, edgy pieces on social issues, such as environmental protests over trash incinerators and the touchy topic of education inequity. Those programmes have, over time, become popular among readers.

The authorities have long turned a blind eye to news sites hiring their own staff to report on non-sensitive news, such as entertainment and sports, but are always wary of any editorial efforts on sensitive topics outside direct government control.

The trigger for the shutdown, said media analysts, was coverage of flooding in northern China which — according to the official count — has left 130 dead and racked up damages of more than 16 billion yuan (S$3.3 billion) in Heibei province alone.

The media relayed the event with videos of landslides and dead bodies floating in ditches. Beijing’s preferred narrative is one of army troops toughing it out to save stranded villages.

“In recent years, the situation for online media has significantly worsened,” said Beijing journalism professor Qiao Mu, adding that coverage of the flooding and other disasters was especially sensitive in the lead-up to the 19th Party Congress next year, when the party will usher in Mr Xi’s second five-year term. AGENCIES

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