China's Ministry of Health proposed a regulation last week that would see journalists who deliberately make up false news regarding food issues being put on a blacklist and being banned from further reporting.

But this proposal has been received negatively. While a few commentators supported this drafted regulation in principal, saying that there were "bad apples" in the media industry and they deserved to be punished, most journalists were criticizing it, worrying that the government would use this blacklist to stop journalists from revealing government scandals.

It's true that some media reports have been sensationalized. A few weeks ago, media reports claimed that toxic growth stimulants were the cause of a rash of exploding watermelons. However, investigation by agricultural experts later found out that the prolonged drought and irregular heavy rainfalls were the main causes. 

As competition in the media industry gets more intense, sensationalism has been adopted by more news reports these days. Serious issues don't draw as many readers as scandal and sensation. Journalists often put eye-catching anecdotes in their reports to surprise their readers, but many of them are groundless or based on misinformed stereotypes. 

Apart from sensationalism reporting, China's media industry is also bugged by blackmail scandals. 

Meng Huaihu, then a reporter at the China Business Times, was charged in 2006 with blackmailing companies with the threat of slanderous reports over the past years. Meng admitted that he did this in order to force those companies to place advertisements on the newspaper he worked for, so that he would receive fat commissions.

There's no excuse for such behavior, but it needs to be punished by the civil courts, not by government regulation.

 That's why most journalists opposed the proposed blacklist. They argue in a society ruled by law, disputes between the media and the government should be handled by the court.

Over the past years, the public has witnessed many cases where journalists have been forced into silence when they exposed local governments' dirty dealings. 

A reporter from CCTV network was recently threatened with losing her job by a manager from a powerful Beijing company, while a reporter from the Xinhua News Agency was confronted by thugs hired by local officials during his investigation over a land dispute in Hebei Province. 

The duty of media is to help the public supervise the government and it should be given the freedom and legal protection to do the job. 

In his book Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, Anthony Lewis, a former columnist for The New York Times, praised the First Amendment of the US Constitution for its role in safeguarding the media's rights to supervise, criticize, and challenge the government's behavior. Many Chinese journalists would like to see such a law here.
 
However, the freedom granted by the US First Amendment has many trade-offs. According to Lewis's book, the law gives relatively no solution to situations where the media's freedom may be abused, such as violations of individual privacy and incitement to violence. 

He also asks whether the media's privileged freedom may disrupt fair trials, especially sensitive ones. 

One example he presented was the Irvin v. Dowd case in 1959, where eight out of 12 jury members had already heard from media reports that the accused was a murderer before they went to court.

These trade-offs are also felt by policymakers in China. They are worried that giving too much freedom to the media would aggravate various political, social, legal and economic issues, which, in a country of 1.3 billion people, might lead to panic, chaos and disaster. 

But while the notion of absolute freedom of speech may not be suitable for China, its spirit of the rule of law should be adopted. A blacklist for yellow journalists may perhaps be well-intended, but it is politics, not law. 

If the Ministry of Health really wants to help individuals or companies targeted by yellow journalism, it should provide legal aid and help them fight their case in a civil court.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. gaolei@globaltimes.com.cn