Drive-Buy Journalism Infests China

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Jamil Anderlini and Mure Dickie report that when the banking company HSBC and the China Charity Foundation recently held a celebration in Beijing, the event organizers paid attending Chinese journalists 200 renminbi ($26.40) as "transport money." "It's awful. It's an embarrassment for Chinese journalism ... and it's corruption," said Ying Chan, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. Esmond Quek, the CEO for Hill & Knowlton's Beijing office, told the Financial Times that payments, which can be more for television crews, were at rates agreed with by China's Public Relations Association (CPRA). "The amount given is standard and specifically for transportation," said Quek, who previously worked for British American Tobacco. However, the "standard" amount is greater than the cost of cross-city taxi fares, and some PR practitioners dispute that the CPRA has endorsed the practice or set a rate.