China bans online media from publishing unverified reports

BEIJING: China has banned online media from publishing unverified content, especially from the social media, after the country's internet regulator punished some major websites that fabricated stories this year.

Online media basing news reports on contents made on social media must verify them before publication, China's Internet regulator said yesterday.

News websites must accredit these sources, and they are banned from fabricating stories or distorting facts, according to a notice issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The CAC has punished some major websites which have fabricated stories this year, including sina.com, ifeng. com, 163.com and the site run by one of the country's biggest Internet companies, Tencent.

In one notorious case, a journalist from the respected Caijing Magazine wrote a story in February based on fabricated online content describing a village in northeast China where villagers do not respect the elderly and women are promiscuous.

The story went viral, the report said.