Reporter confined by county official(2)

After the reporter again refused to accept the money, Xue made a phone call to Liu Wanyuan, Xu's editor and a member of the editorial board of China Newsweek, asking her to withdraw the news report.

The official even made a written statement, at Liu's request, in which he said that the county's land resources bureau "didn't need news media to publish any report".

The statement, with the stamp of the county's land resources bureau, was faxed to Liu.

The official called Liu "sister" and promised to give her money. He told Liu in the phone: "You name a price, 50,000 or 100,000 yuan?"

Xue said he would release the reporter if Liu accepted the money and if the news magazine killed the story.

"I told him that I would not bargain with him, and he must release the reporter without any conditions," Liu told China Daily on Dec 27.

After Liu's demand that Xue release the reporter was ignored, Liu exposed the situation on her micro blog at about 4:25 pm.

Xue's written statement was uploaded by Liu onto her micro blog, attracting the attention of thousands of netizens who forwarded the post.

China Newsweek also exposed the issue on its verified micro blog, calling for the public to express concern for the reporter's safety.

At about 5:30 pm, an official surnamed Guo, who identified himself as the deputy director of the county's publicity department, came to Xue's office and asked the reporter whether China Newsweek could delete its micro-blog posts on the issue.

"I became not so worried about my safety after the publicity official's arrival because it showed that the public had expressed its concern about the issue through micro blogs," the reporter said.

Xu said he was escorted by the bureau officials to the railway station at about 6:30, and he reached Beijing safely that night.

An official from Nanpi county's land and resources bureau told China Daily that Xue's office was locked on the morning of Dec 27, and he did not show up that morning.

"There was no official paper released about whether Xue was removed or not," the official said on condition of anonymity.

China Daily could not reach Xue for comment on Dec 27.

The Cangzhou city's land and resource bureau said in an announcement on its website that the bureau is going to investigate the land seizure case involved with Xue.

Liu Xiaoying, a professor of media research at the Communication University of China, said that it was the micro blog that attracted the public's interest in the issue and finally led to the release of the reporter.

"Although the reporters' right of disclosing the truth was guaranteed by the law, they are always harassed or even attacked when covering negative news," he said.

The micro blog made the issue more transparent to the public, and as a result, the government could not misbehave, he said.