media - Nanfang editor might escape sentence

Cheng Yizhong, the chief-editor of the Southern Metropolis News, might get escape charges for corruption, that have largely been seen as a way to get even on the way his paper dealt with SARS, corruption and other hot issues in China, the China Digital News reports, quoting the South China Morning Post.
"Sources said former Guangdong Communist Party chief Ren Zhongyi, a reformist, and former party official Wu Nansheng had written to current party secretary Zhang Dejiang asking him to make his views on the case known," writes the SCMP. "The China Youth Daily has described the case against Mr Cheng as a joke and urged the central government to step in. Mr Cheng was first arrested on January 8 but released after deputy party secretary Cai Dongshi intervened. He was re-arrested on March 19 after the court handed a 12-year sentence to the tabloid's former general manager, Yu Huafeng, for embezzlement, and jailed Li Minying, a former director of the newspaper's parent group, for 11 years for taking bribes."