Coming Clean on 'Red Envelopes'

For about two years, I worked as a reporter at a sports magazine. One day I had a conversation with a few other journalists and someone said another reporter had never taken a red envelope, the common packaging for bribes. The reaction among them was quizzical: Is he loaded? What's his deal?

As far as I know, only some financial news companies make it a policy to refuse bribes – usually in the form of red envelopes labeled as travel expenses. They're often branded as having more money than sense. But the severity of corruption is so high that reporters who want to return the envelopes need to do that covertly.