Lan's daughter

media - The full report of a reporter's death

Earlier I gave the link to ESWN's translation of a report of Wang Keqin regarding the killing of Shanxi reporter Lan Chengzhang. That was the official report in his paper, but Wang has now published also the missing pieces and pictures on his weblog and China Digital Times translates them.
Some of the censored parts:

When Lan's 4-year old little daughter Lu Lu saw the swelled and deformed head of her father, she remarked, "That's not my father." At Lan Chengzhang's home, the reporter saw Lu Lu wearing her white mourning dress [pictured, as photographed by Wang]. At times she would cry along with her mother, while at other moments, she bounced and darted about.

The piece gives more background to the story that many "news-bureau's" in the region only make money by blackmailing mine owners. One other quote from the extensive article:

In outset of the 1990s, taking “red envelopes” at “news conferences” became a new type of “paid news”. One reporter from a certain Beijing newspaper set a record of attending 26 “press conferences” in a month.
But overall, the media advertising market was gradually changed from a “seller’s market” in the 1980’s to a “buyer’s market” in the 1990’s. The situation was even more so for national newspapers. Therefore, “news rent seeking” became more expensive and difficult. This may explain why in recent years, there were many cases of news blackmailing in the name of watchdog journalism.

In China news and business operations are not separated and Wang Keqin argues that is much needed:

It appears that supervisory departments have not only recognized the seriousness of the problems, but also have found suitable countermeasures. Still, the worry is that if the internal mechanisms of the press, specifically the mechanisms of business operations and news operations, cannot be effectively separated, it will be hard for this form of self-inspection to create a stable system. Instead the winds of false formalism will blow in and out. It would seem likely that the “red envelope” phenomenon will not stop but rather will grow. And demanding the media change its current operations model seems an even harder mission.

Much more at the China Digital Times.