Chinese officials are denying reports they're keeping dossiers on foreign journalists who are planning to cover the Beijing Olympics.
With fewer than nine months until the 2008 Summer Games open, Chinese officials attempted to back away Tuesday from widely published comments that the communist government is assembling a database to monitor foreign reporters.
The Foreign Ministry and the Beijing organizing committee struggled to contain the damage from a front-page story in the state-run China Daily, with officials offering a series of denials 24 hours after the report appeared.
The story raises questions about the country's pledge of increased media freedom, part of a successful campaign in landing the Olympics six years ago. It also suggests China's authoritarian government may have heavy-handed plans for dealing with the 28,000 reporters expected for the Games.
"The report you mentioned is incorrect,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Tuesday. "There is no such database.''
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