Via MediaBistro’s daily email alert, AP reports:

BEIJING (AP) — China plans to create a blacklist of journalists who break its reporting rules, state media reported Friday, adding to an array of controls used to restrict its domestic media.
According to a report in the China Press and Publishing Journal, the agency that exercises control over the state-owned Chinese media plans to “establish a database of media professionals with a bad record.”
It said reporters who violate the rules or laws will have their press cards taken away. “Their names will be entered into the list and they will be restricted from news reporting or editing work,” Li Dongdong, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, was quoted as saying.
The database is among a series of regulations being proposed to boost government supervision of news coverage, Li said. Among them are tightened reviews for press credentials as well as standardized qualifications for newspaper and magazine editors.
Li said the measures were needed to “resolutely prevent fake reporting.”

Fake reporting about, for instance, what’s about to happen to the Chinese economy now that world consumption has fallen off the proverbial cliff.