The station broadcasts on a frequency used by the local educational TV station, knocking it off the airwaves within a 20-kilometer radius. Police in Henan's Lankao County have fined the station for showing pornographic movies, the reports said. More than 100 villagers blocked their way when they tried a second time to close the station. The erosion of government control over Chinese media has been fed by loosened social controls and widespread corruption. Numerous private TV stations have sprung up in Lankao and neighbouring counties, often with the protection of local officials.
Chinese papers call foreign press 'inhuman'.
In an apparent attempt to discredit foreign reports about the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, two Chinese state-run newspapers said Western reporters knew in advance of a group suicide attempt and did nothing to stop it. CNN said in a statement that it had received no advance notice of the protest and that its crew had been ''routinely checking the square over the course of the day.'' ''If they knew beforehand that these people planned to burn themselves and then saw at the scene that the self-immolators included a child but did not come forward to stop it, then these reporters are just too inhuman,'' the newspapers said. Newspapers carried extensive coverage and gruesome photographs of the charred victims. The move is clearly aimed at galvanising public opinion against Falun Gong and justifying an 18-month government campaign against the group. Falun Gong again distanced itself from the self- immolations.