While the FBI and SOCA have been on a seizure spree against websites selling bank card details, China has closed down 42 sites run by ‘journalists’. These were not news sites, they were anti-news sites. The purpose was not to publish news, but to hide the news for a fee: simple blackmail. “Chinese authorities have announced the closure of 42 websites involved in blackmail cases that saw them pose as accredited journalists capable of disclosing their victims' ‘negative information’,” reported China Daily on Saturday.
Blackmail is common throughout the world, and the internet makes the threat of adverse publicity considerably easier. According to China Daily the culprits specifically posed as journalists. It is not clear, however, whether the term has exactly the same meaning as we use in the West. “Condemning such acts as severe illegalities,” continues China Daily, “the official stressed that one must hold a press card issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication for news reporting.” Since the report says that the culprits ‘posed’ as accredited journalists, we have to assume that they were not, in Chinese terms, actual journalists – they were simply criminals.
This doesn’t mean that genuine journalists do not practice similar blackmail in China. It seems to be a growing problem, and one that will flourish in any culture that has endemic corruption. Back in January 2012 the Washington Post published an article headlined “Blackmailing By Journalists In China Seen As ‘Frequent’.”
“‘It’s very, very frequent,’ said Ma Yunlong, an editor whose newspaper exposed an instance of extravagant extortion in central Henan province in 2005,” writes the Post. Nearly 500 ‘reporters and others pretending to be reporters’ demanded ‘shut-up’ fees to keep news of a mining disaster out of the public eye. “If the ruling party distorts the news for political reasons, blackmailing reporters have concluded, why wouldn't they do it themselves for financial reasons?”
With the current website closures, Xinuanet reports that an official “said all perpetrators involved in the blackmail cases will be punished, urging the public to report any illegal online activity.” It goes on to add that the SIIO also announced the closure of 21 sites for distributing pornography, and that 107 websites have now been closed by the Chinese authorities since March.