The internet regulation arm of the Chinese government has issued a warning to online news organizations that they cannot use social media as a source of information in their stories.

“All websites should bear the key responsibility to further streamline the course of reporting and publishing of news, and set up a sound internal monitoring mechanism among all mobile news portals [and the social media chat websites] Weibo or WeChat,” the agency said in a new directive as reported by government news site Xinhua (via The South China Morning Post).

“It is forbidden to use hearsay to create news or use conjecture and imagination to distort the facts.”

On paper this may sound like a good thing, as it would prevent news sites from reporting sketchy claims from unverified sources, but the directive will also make it extremely difficult for news organizations to report on a number of newsworthy events that are shared online. For example, many participants of the protests in Hong Kong communicated and shared images via social media, and under China’s new restrictions, that information would be considered unsourced.

“No website is allowed to report public news without specifying the sources, or report news that quotes untrue origins,” Xinhua said.

Xinhua claimed that a number of Chinese news organizations have already received punishments for citing “fabricated” sources from social media, including Sina.com, Ifeng.com, Caijing.com.cn, Qq.com, and 163.com.

Photo by 大杨