December 14, 2005 - Interfax is reporting that several local Chinese news agencies were bribed to prevent them from reporting on Sony cameras being deemed unfit for sale in certain provinces.
On December 12th Sony was forced to pull 6 different camera models from Chinese shelves after Zhejiang’s Industrial and Commercial Bureau claimed to have found manufacturing defects with imaging balance, white balance, automatic exposure and faulty LCD screen components during spot checks for quality. Aside from DCI, the People’s Daily and Xinau (China’s official state news outlet) were the only news sources we found reporting on the situation yesterday.
Interfax now says that Zhejiang officials are accusing Sony publicists of offering large advertisements in local newspapers in exchange for no story coverage on the product pull. Sony has not yet commented on the situation. A spokesman for Sony out of Shanghai says that they are still trying to acquire more information on both the product pull and the bribery accusations.
