Call to protect Chinese journalists hired by foreign media
Chinese nationals need better protection when working for foreign media outlets, journalists have said after the arrest of a Bloomberg News staff member for purportedly putting national security in jeopardy.
The call came after Chinese journalist Haze Fan was detained on Monday in Beijing for allegedly engaging in criminal activities that endangered national security, according to officials quoted by Apple Daily. Her case was under investigation and her family had been notified about the development, the officials said.
Vicky Xu, an Australian-Chinese reporter, said Fan’s case highlighted the plight of many Chinese nationals, who faced numerous risks and unfair treatment while working for foreign media in mainland China.
By law, Beijing did not allow mainlanders to work as correspondents with foreign outlets. Companies often used a legal loophole to hire them for news reporting, by calling them researchers or assistants instead, Xu said. Many of those reporters, mostly young women, took the most risks, she said.
“[They] do the hardest work and get paid the least. There is no career progression, no compensation, and not even fair pay. We’ll talk about sexual harassment some other time,” Xu said in a Twitter thread.
She went on to criticize how “shameful and racist” it was for news organizations to use Chinese law as an excuse to undervalue mainland reporters. Companies should set up formalized processes to grant promotions or visa or citizenship sponsorships to help such staffers secure safe employment, she said.
“If this doesn’t change, more Chinese reporters will be taken, tortured, and news [organizations] are responsible as well as the Chinese [government],” she wrote.
Joanna Chiu, a journalist with the Canadian newspaper Toronto Star, agreed that foreign news outlets needed to give Chinese-born journalists more credit and better protection.
Two Chinese “news assistants” who spoke to Chiu previously in an interview said they were treated as “second-tier support staffers” when their duties were equal to those of any other reporter in the newsroom, she added.
In some instances, the media headquarters would not know such “news assistants” even existed because they were paid off the books by foreign correspondents, Chiu said. That practice often left Chinese reporters unprotected with no support when they were intimidated, harassed or detained by Chinese police while reporting on the front line.
At Bloomberg, editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and other senior executives on Friday said that Fan’s detention was not likely related to her reporting.
Fan joined Bloomberg in 2017, having worked for CNBC, Al Jazeera, CBS News and Thomson Reuters. She describes herself as a “global business reporter.”
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