NPC Gives Mixed Reaction to Emergency News Legislation

BEIJING --- When the National People's Congress first considered the draft text of a new law to regulate the media's handling of news about emergencies last June, it caused uproar within usually docile press circles for its demand that news outlets must secure government permission before issuing reports.

While the need for reform in this area is widely accepted following the disastrous management of emergency information during the SARS crisis in 2003 and the Songhua River pollution incident in 2005, critics saw the media's subservience to local government as being directly responsible for causing the most confusion.

It was then, with some excitement, that the official press began to dissect the contents of the second draft of the legislation now before the NPC and found that the explicit references to securing government approval before release were absent. In particular, Article 45 that deals with the obligation of media to publish information no longer suggests that those reports should be 'regulated’ by government.

However, while these changes were welcomed, some legislators expressed their disappointment that specific levels for fines and other disciplinary actions to be taken in the event of media publishing or broadcasting false reports were also removed from the re-draft. This, they saw as weakening the legislation and providing unnecessary leeway for government interpretation of responsibilities in such cases.

So, while the removal of some contentious articles can be seen as some recognition that government control over the media in times of emergencies is not necessarily the best course of action (a breakthrough in thinking), it was tempered by the watering down of specific punishments to be meted out to those found guilty.