China Profiling Foreign Journalists

Surely the noble guardians of the First Amendment will be up in arms over this report.

The Chinese government has created profiles on thousands of foreign journalists coming to report on next summer's Beijing Olympics and is gathering information on thousands more to put into a database, a top official said in comments published Monday.

The profiles appeared to undermine promises made by Chinese leaders in when they were bidding for the Games, that the event would lead to greater media freedoms.

Memo to the AP: Do not take Communists at their word.

The database with information on the 28,000 foreign journalists expected for the Olympics would be a reference for interview subjects, designed to protect them from being tricked or blackmailed by "fake reporters," Liu Binjie, minister of the General Administration of Press and Publication, was quoted as saying in the state-run China Daily newspaper.

"Disguising as reporters to threaten and intimidate others to collect money is cheating and very dangerous to society," Liu told the English-language paper.

In China, people sometimes pose as reporters to extort money from corrupt officials or demand payment for false promises of favorable news coverage. A nationwide campaign launched in August netted 150 fake reporters and 300 unregistered publications, China Daily said.

Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said fake reporters looking for kickbacks in China is a legitimate concern, but that it was an internal problem.

"Applying that to foreign journalists seems to me widely off the mark. This is an unnecessary overreaction," he said.

Yes, just an overreaction. Can you just imagine the outcry if the United States compiled such information on journalists visiting here?

We'd never hear the end of it from the left.

Let's see if they speak up now or quietly acquiesce.

I suspect it will be the latter. After all, as history has shown us, many so-called journalists put access before dignity.

UPDATE: At least one organization has noticed. It's a start.

New York, November 12, 2007—The Chinese government should abandon its crackdown on so-called “fake” foreign journalists in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ expressed alarm that the government’s plan, which includes amassing records of thousands of foreign journalists seeking Olympics accreditation, is a pretext to block critical reporters from covering the Games.