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Beijing court sentenced China Central Television (CCTV) art director Zhao An to 10 years behind bars last Friday for taking bribes.
The briber, an awkward doggerel writer who once had a hand in major CCTV events on the screen thanks to Zhao's favour, got six years in jail.
In order to promote his work and himself on the State-owned television network, lyricist Zhang Junyi offered Zhao cash and gifts from 1994 to 2000. He bought his way into some popular CCTV shows with Zhao's help, though his works were more often than not the laughingstock.
Given that both men got what they deserved, the judicial procedure for the case came to a temporary close. Temporary because both are expected to lodge an appeal.
For TV viewers, it no longer matters what happens during their respective appeals, if lodged.
We are waiting in eager anticipation to see how far the judiciary will go since it has stepped into the turbid water of media corruption.
Malpractice by corrupt media professionals has long been raising the ire of the public and it is common perception that Zhao and Zhang are just the tip of a mammoth iceberg.
Although the case may be viewed as a sideshow to the nation's entertainment circle, it has an important parallel to the field of serious journalism.
Shameless undertakings, cultivated by monetary and material rewards, have permeated deeply into China's journalism profession.
Forget celebrities who are hired to brag about the quality of unknown "famous brands" in infomercials. We know they were paid to try and sell them to us.
From the way they are presented, it is not difficult to pick out an infomercial, perhaps making their impact less damaging to the audience.
But when media groups or representatives are bought to push untruths, or conceal the truth, they are particularly deceitful and harmful.
Mainstream Chinese media has enjoyed popular trust because of its traditional authority related, more or less, to State sponsorship.
What was printed in newspapers used to be taken for gospel because of the popular assumption that the government did everything by the book.
But there has been heaping evidence that trust is being abused. Money is increasingly becoming the lubricant for the media. Currency can be used to buy a favourable media critique, or simply silence.
It is almost taken for granted that when a journalist comes out with a favourable report, it might very well be followed by a request for a reward.
In what is popularly known as "soft advertising," journalists do the salespeople's job in the form of news reporting.
If it is not hard for the common eye to see through tricks like this, it is quite a different story when money is spent to silence the media.
Not long ago, local officials and mine owners in Shanxi Province bribed journalists with the influential Xinhua News Agency and other media organizations to conceal facts about a horrible mine accident that killed dozens of people.
From time to time, we heard the media lamenting an increasingly cynical public.
That would not have been the case had the media not abused the trust it once enjoyed.
When media workers disregard the moral concerns of their profession, it is only fair that they become the objects of public disdain.
If numerous others like Zhao are not ferreted out, there is little chance the media can recover its damaged credibility.
(China Daily December 19, 2003)
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