Hong Kong TV Officials Resign Over False Report

Two months after Asia Television, a broadcaster based in Hong Kong, carried an apparently false report that the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin had died, two of the broadcaster’s top news executives have taken responsibility for the report and resigned.

The two executives — Leung Ka-wing, a senior vice president, and his deputy, Tammy Tam Wai-yee — disclosed their resignations late Monday. Asia Television’s news channel reported in a bulletin on July 6 that the 85-year-old Mr. Jiang, who led the Communist Party in China from 1989 to 2002, had died. The channel later retracted the report and apologized. China was swept by rumors of Mr. Jiang’s illness or death after he failed to appear at an observance of the Communist Party’s 90th anniversary in early July. Though the official Xinhua news agency rejected the Asia Television report as “pure rumor,” there has been no official word on Mr. Jiang’s condition. The Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority has said that it is investigating 41 complaints about the report.