Media hacks must pay

They should have stood at the front of the line to expose the coverup of coalmine accidents, but they turned out to be among the culprits who have contributed to the conspiracy.

They are the reporters who have been bribed into silence. They received bribes instead of reporting the coalmine accidents. They are the bad apples and more than a dozen have already been sentenced to various years of imprisonment, but some are still at large 18 months after the fatal accident in a coalmine in North China's Hebei province.

The fact the local Weixian county government has spent more than 2.6 million yuan ($382,000) in keeping a number of reporters quiet about the accident in June constitutes an affront to the professionalism of journalism and to the conscience of these reporters.