Of reporters and red packets

You didn't hear this in the 1980s. It was a time of innocence. When national newspaper reporters still pedaled their bicycles to official meetings at the Ministry of Public Security, and took a three-day train ride for an assignment to Xinjiang, they didn't get paid by interviewees.

In contrast, last week, a financial news reporter and a former colleague (now apparently a full-time day trader of stocks), who worked for a prestigious business newspaper, pleaded guilty in a Beijing court for taking bribes from a Chinese company newly-listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The reporter had picked out some flaws in the company's advertising campaigns. That was apparently out of an innocent intention, for the court could not find that his purpose was to force the company to pay him hush money.

However, his former colleague claimed he received a telephone call from the company hoping that he could stop the reporter from running more "negative" stories disruptive to the company's overseas fund-raising plan.