China isn’t the only country where reporters go to jail.
In September 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that two Chronicle reporters were sent to prison for as long as a year and a half for not revealing their sources.
In July 2005, Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, who worked for the New York Times at the time, was jailed for contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.
In fact, the First Amendment Center has a list of U.S. reporters who have gone to jail.
The first case was in 1848 when a Senate committee confined John Nugent, a correspondent for the New York Herald.
An example of how one law is different around the world.
Then between 1848 and 1897, there were five more cases.
Starting in 1911 and through the 20th century, the “free” press in America had more than 30 collisions with the law.
I stopped counting at thirty.
When I started to research the China side of this topic, I learned that Yahoo’s Hong Kong office helped China catch journalist Shi Tao for “divulging state secrets”. Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Source: BBC
In fact, The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that in 2008, 125 journalists went to prison around the globe. Twenty-eight were in China.
China’s laws and sentences tend to be longer and harsher, but China does not have America’s legal system or Constitution, which were designed to protect American citizens from the government and criminals in the U.S. – not China.
Every country has different penalties for crimes. For example, what is the worst that could happen if you were caught in Turkey with illegal drugs? Up to 20 years in prison.
However, in Singapore and Thailand, there is a death penalty for this crime. Source: Drug laws abroad
See Growing China’s Legal System
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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