China's journalism supervisory bodies vowed to launch a campaign on June 10 to deal with any possible false news and build a mechanism to guarantee the authenticity of news in the future.

Officials with the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the State Administration of Press and Publication on Thursday pledged to take stringent measures to prevent all possible false news.

All types of media, whether CPC-owned newspapers and magazines, state-owned TV stations, radio stations and newspapers, or commercial newspapers and news websites, must strive for authenticity. Journalists found to manipulate news will be severely punished and could be banned from newswriting altogether.

In March 2005, the Beijing Morning Post carried a false news reporting that 150 billion yuan would be withdrawn from China's stock market, causing a drop in share prices at the Shanghai Stock Exchange and panic among shareholders. Later, the reporter confessed that he had written the story based on a piece of fabricated news in a bid to draw attention.

Source: Xinhua