China sacks editor for critical reports- source

BEIJING, May 26 (Reuters) An editor at an outspoken Chinese newspaper was sacked today after he wrote a story critical of government officials, a media source said, the latest example of a crackdown on the press.

Luo Changping was dismissed from his job at the Beijing News ''because authorities thought a story he had written had criticised the central government's disciplinary body'', the source told Reuters.

''Officials demanded his dismissal not only because of this one story,'' the source said without elaborating.

Government officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Beijing News has run afoul of the government in the past. In December the top editor was fired after the daily reported on official misdeeds including the bloody suppression of protesting farmers in northern China.

Luo was also involved in a series of articles that exposed official corruption including the hiring of thugs by local officials to threaten and kill farmers who had protested against seizure of their land.

A Chinese Internet writer, Yang Tianshui, was jailed for 12 years for ''subversion of state power'' after backing a movement by exiled dissidents to hold free elections, his lawyer said last week.

The sentence came a day after the lawyer for New York Times researcher Zhao Yan said the case against him had been revived, dashing hopes for his imminent release. Zhao has been held since September 2004 accused of leaking state secrets.

REUTERS SHR BST1944