Friday 18 September 2009
Shenzhen begins push to increase transparency
When it comes to freedom of the press, the mainland has a poor record overall by Western standards, but Shenzhen authorities announced yesterday a new initiative to enhance government transparency, saying that officials who violated it could face Communist Party disciplinary action or lose their jobs.
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Shenzhen begins push to increase transparency
Fiona Tam
16 September 2009
When it comes to freedom of the press, the mainland has a poor record overall by Western standards, but Shenzhen authorities announced yesterday a new initiative to enhance government transparency, saying that officials who violated it could face Communist Party disciplinary action or lose their jobs.
The latest regulation will require officials to give notice of any potential public emergency within two hours of the government launching its crisis management mechanism.
“From December 1, any department heads of the Shenzhen government must not refuse or obstruct reporters’ interviews over major policy changes, government work, disasters and emergencies, or they will need to account for dereliction of duty,” Xinhua said, quoting the new regulation.
Authorities said they would evaluate propaganda officials’ work and promise to investigate complaints filed by the media and members of the public.
The last regulation implemented by Shenzhen to boost government transparency was in 2003, but few mainland or overseas reporters said they had seen substantial improvement and did not believe the new initiative would give them access to government news any more easily than before.
Shenzhen authorities have repeatedly boasted that Shenzhen is one of the few mainland cities to have set up departmental and bureau spokesmen to respond to media queries. They did that in 2003.
About 100 city government spokesmen have been told “not to evade or keep silent on media queries over important issues of public concern”, the Nanfang Daily said.
But when disgraced former Shenzhen mayor Xu Zongheng, whose graft scandal and detention became headlines in several Hong Kong newspapers in June, disappeared, no city government spokesmen or government-funded newspapers responded to reporters’ queries about his whereabouts for at least four days. No spokesmen were disciplined for stonewalling on news about Xu’s detention.
But reporters from the outspoken Southern Metropolis News complained, both publicly and privately, that they had been detained, pushed around or even roughed up by Shenzhen police officers while trying to cover criminal cases.
Foreign reporters said they had been subjected to tedious accreditation procedures when they tried to contact Shenzhen propaganda department officials, and interview requests were frequently rejected.
Reporters also ran into difficulty last week in Xinjiang, where three Hong Kong journalists covering unrest in the autonomous region were beaten by police.
In response, about 700 Hong Kong journalists took to the streets to condemn what they called brutal treatment.
Mainland media organs are not allowed to dictate government transparency, and it is propaganda officials who often censor negative news.
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