China has 2.8 lakh journalists

China has about 2.8 lakh registered journalists which include more than 1,100 reporters mostly associated with the tightly controlled official media, a government report said today on the country's 16th Journalists' Day.
Male reporters make up about 53 per cent and most of the journalists have university degrees, State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) said in a statement.
More than 82,000 journalists are associated with newspapers and about 5,400 with periodicals, it said, adding that nearly 2,600 reporters work for news agencies.
There are about 117,000 TV reporters and 1,100 Internet reporters.
Chinese media continues to be government owned, including the internet news reporting.

On Friday, China for the first time permitted official media websites to report news, but retained monopoly over the media by omitting popular private social media portals like Sina which has millions of users.
China had previously banned most websites from reporting news, only allowing them to edit and publish news from traditional media.
Despite this, there had been a trend for websites to follow up their own stories, interview sources and release news in their own name.