Prompted by Scuffle With Guards : Chinese Papers Asserting Stronger Rights for Media

PEKING — Zhai Wei, a photographer for a Peking evening newspaper, was covering a relatively routine industrial exhibition last week when he saw a woman faint and fall to the frozen ground.

Zhai ran to a nearby hotel to fetch a taxi for the woman but, when he returned, security guards refused to let the cab inside the gates. And when he tried to take a picture of the guards blocking the entrance, he said, six of them jumped on him, twisted his arms and neck and seized his camera.

What started as a mundane assignment for Zhai has suddenly blossomed into a cause celebre for the Chinese press. In the days since the incident, Zhai’s own newspaper, the Peking Wanbao (Evening News), and other Chinese newspapers have published accounts protesting the incident and calling for greater protection of the rights of journalists to gather news.

“Such brutal handling of a newsman who was trying to save someone is totally intolerable,” the newspaper China Daily said in a story headlined, “Guards Manhandle News Photographer.”

The press campaign appears to have the approval of Chinese authorities and could have significant political implications here. It amounts to a rare official acknowledgment of the need for greater controls on Chinese security personnel and could also indicate a more assertive role for the Chinese press.

Over the last few years, Chinese newspapers have begun to publish a number of muckraking stories investigating malfeasance or corruption by local officials.

However, the papers, which are all either directly or indirectly controlled by the Communist Party, have refrained from criticizing the policies or ideology of the party’s central leadership. Articles about problems in Chinese society, such as housing shortages or transportation delays, generally conclude with descriptions of how matters are being improved.

In recent months, though, there have been signs that at least some editors and reporters are beginning to rebel against official restrictions on them.

Late last year, a reporter for the People’s Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper, wrote an article in the monthly magazine Democracy and Legal System detailing efforts by authorities in Hunan province to prevent him from exposing misdeeds of local officials.

The reporter, Wu Xinghua, said he was offered cut-rate cigarettes, visited by relatives and sent anonymous letters telling him to “get out of Hunan,” all in attempts to influence his news coverage.

“Laws should be made to protect the rights of the media to report the truth, to criticize and to expose the evils existing in our society,” Wu wrote.

However, nothing has galvanized public attention quite so much as last week’s incident involving Zhai.

On Jan. 28, Zhai was assigned to take pictures of a sales exhibition at the Peking Light Industrial Products Exhibition Hall in the northwestern part of the city. When he saw a woman named Gao Ping lying unconscious on the ground in freezing temperatures, he went to the nearby Friendship Hotel to get a taxi for her.

Chinese security guards are often instructed to bar all unauthorized visitors from the locations they are protecting and, as a result, taxis are generally required to wait outside the gates of government buildings or compounds.

After Zhai became embroiled in the dispute with the security guards, an editor came to the hall. He was told that Zhai was a “phony reporter” or was “seeking personal gain.” The following day, according to the newspaper’s account, an official of the exhibition hall visited the paper, said the security guards had only been performing their duty and urged that the paper not publish anything about the incident.

The paper, though, published a front-page story two days later--a delay suggesting that it may have been making sure it had official authorization to criticize the security guards.

Once the story appeared, it was immediately picked up by other Chinese newspapers and television and radio stations. The All-China Journalists Assn., a trade group, publicly denounced the way Zhai was treated.

On Sunday, the officials of the exhibition hall announced that they have decided to punish the security guards. According to the officials, three of the guards have been dismissed from their jobs and three others will lose their salary bonuses for from three to six months. In addition, the exhibition hall officials “made an open self-criticism,” according to Zhai’s newspaper.

As for Gao, the woman whose illness touched off the dispute, she was carried to the taxi by bystanders and taken to a Peking hospital. On Sunday, the Peking Evening News published a letter it said it had received from her, thanking the photographer for his help and denouncing the security guards’ “despicable attitude.”