ESWN has translated an interesting article from MediaChina.net on how people representing themselves as journalists are extorting money from organizations and officials either by offering to provide them with good press coverage or threatening them with bad coverage. Apparently these fake journalists and news organizations go as far as actually printing publications in some circumstances:
According to the Liandu District public security bureau director, these fake reporters pay close attention to their packaging and exaggerate their positions.  When they create their fake magazines, they put photographs of major national leaders on the cover and then print the words on the front page: "For the reading by senior national leaders, National People's Congress delegates and National Political Consultative Committee delegates."  At the same time, they falsely list certain Party and government leaders and other well-known celebrities as their advisors or editorial committee members.  Furthermore, Wu rented an office from a certain Zhejiang province government department in order to impress people with his 'connections.'

With these 'covers', Wu was successful.  After a while, Wu must have felt that he really was a reporter for a national publication.  When the police arrested him, he was in the process of bullshitting two villagers who came to ask for his "assistance."  He told them that when he published the two articles critical of Lishui City, both the Lishui City Party Secretary and the Liandu District Party Secretary had come to plead with him but he ignored them.  When the police revealed their identity, Wu was embarrassed and finally admitted: "This time, the bullshit went too far!"

In recent years, there have been many cases of fake reporters working at the grassroots level.  Sometimes, even though the enterprises and governments knew that these were fake reporters, they still let them go.  A grassroots level propaganda director said frankly that fake reporters appear because the bad behavior in the media industry provided fertile ground for them to grow.  To some people, reporters are people with connections -- they can leverage their job positions, they are acquainted with the big shots, they can do "things" that others cannot, and the media can be used to promote or destroy a person's career.  Many media workers do not approach work from the viewpoint of producing the best report possible; instead, they maximize their own interests through their special powers as media.  This tendency became the general belief about how media works.  With this impression, it is easy for the fake reporters to move in and blackmail or deceive people.
It's interesting that the problem is blamed on insufficiently disciplined legitimate media and abuse of power by actual journalists. This suggests that the situation is somehow the fault of a media industry that is not under sufficient control or regulation, rather than the fault of, say, a pervasive culture of bureaucratic corruption. Or a culture that emphasizes the value of relationships in advancing agendas through the bureaucracy. Or a lack of other channels of recourse for people with grievances.

This isn't meant to absolve those journalists who do abuse their positions of trust. That can happen in any society, as people everywhere see journalists as able to help them petition the powerful or solve their problems. When I worked at a TV news assignment desk in San Francisco, in the early nineties, we used to get regular calls from desperate people who hoped that, somehow, a TV news organization could help them to solve their personal problems. (I can't think of one problem that we ever did help anyone solve.) The fact that people look to journalists and news organizations as potential saviors creates opportunities to betray trust.

There are perfectly reasonable ways of dealing with these situations. I'm sure fraud is a crime in China, and can be punished as such, if the government so chooses. As someone who is friends with several Chinese reporters, I would be worried were the entire legitimate media to be scapegoated for the behavior of a few con-artists, or even a few bent journalists.

Worth a read.