Management of Online Reporting on Juvenile Crime and Bullying Incidents

Title: Notification on Further Strengthening Management of Online Reporting of Juvenile Crime and Bullying Incidents
Promulgating Entities: Cybersecurity Administration
Reference number: 
Promulgation Date: 2015-6-30
Expiration date: 
Source of text: http://www.legaldaily.com.cn/xwzx/content/2015-07/01/content_6149066.htm?node=53628

Notification on Further Strengthening Management of Online Reporting of Juvenile Crime and Bullying Incidents

Cybersecurity Administration

To the network information offices of all provinces, autonomous regions and directly governed municipalities, and the , Central News Websites:

Recently, online reporting involving bullying or humiliation of minors and juvenile crimes has seen an upward trend, individual reports reveal details of school violence and juvenile crimes, sensationalizing the personal injuries and humiliations suffered by minors, even violating minors' privacy, and causing an even more serious second harm to minors.

In order to strengthen the management of online reporting on juvenile crimes and bullying incidents, and in order to protect minors' psychological and physical health and lawful rights and interests, and pursuant to the 《PRC Law on the Protection of Minors》 and the 《Online News and Information Services Management Regulations》 and other laws and regulations, the following requirements are put forward:

I. When websites carry news reports involving minors, they should first consider protecting the rights and interests of the minors, and carry out reporting on the basis of the special characteristics of minors. They should form and guide awareness of protecting minors' relevant rights and interests, respect minors' personal dignity, and uphold and implement the principle of putting the interests of minors first.

II. Websites publishing reports involving juvenile crimes and bullying incidents, should in principle adopt the main central media's reports. When it is truly necessary to use drafts from other sources, they should strictly conduct a review, have the website's chief editor sign off on it, preserving proofs of the signing off and its basis.

III. Websites must not place reporting of juvenile crimes and bullying incidents on their homepage or news channel headlines, and must not suggest related content in blogs, microblogs, forums, postings, pop-up windows, navigation bars, search engines or other such positions, and they must not create special topics or aggregate related reports.

IV. In online reporting involving minors, there must be no sensationalized reporting on involving corporal punishment of minors or conduct insulting their personal dignity, school violence or the circumstances of juvenile crimes.

V. When conducting online reporting of juvenile crime cases, the minor's name, residence, photograph or other materials from which the minor might be identified, must not be revealed. Minors' personal information must not be revealed, in order to avoid causing a second harm to the minor.

VI. In online reporting involving minors, it is forbidden to use illegal videos or photographs such as those involving minors that are violent, bloody, lewd or terrifying, that have not been processed.

VII. In online reporting involving minors, it is forbidden to use methods such as coercion or inducement to gather information, and it is forbidden to discriminate against minors or use negative news about minors in order to generate a commercial profit.

VIII. Online reporting involving minors should strengthen publicity reporting of minors' positive progress in words and deeds, and should promptly impart criticism and guidance on negative phenomena that appear among minors; having minors differentiate, through the means of media reporting, between what is pure, good and beautiful from what is false, evil and ugly; promptly correct one's own negative words and actions to create a positive popular opinion environment for minors to live, study and grow up in; and cause minors to have role models to study, directions to work towards, and promoting minors' happy and healthy upbringing.

IX. Websites should put in place entity responsibility, complete relevant management systems, and strengthen management of online reporting about minors, and at the same time should strictly manage content that netizens upload or share relating to online juvenile crimes and bullying incidents, promptly deleting information that violates laws or regulations.

X. All levels of network management departments should strengthen management of reporting on minors as well as negative online information. Admonishment meetings, warnings, fines and other disposition methods up to revocation of website news information service credentials are lawfully adopted against units and individuals that violate relevant provisions of this Notification causing negative impact.

Cybersecurity Administration

6/30/2015