"They forcefully dragged me to the police car and pushed me into it by pressing my neck. When they asked me if I was reporter or not, I said yes, and they claimed that they were catching reporters," he told the Beijing News.

Wang was put into custody at Chaoyang police station in Yichun together with Wang Nan, a journalist from the Legal Mirror, and the police said they could only leave if it was approved by their superiors, according to the Beijing News.

According to Hua Jingwei, head of Yichun's publicity department, the detention was a misunderstanding, and the ban on covering the funeral homes came too late from the investigation team to inform all the reporters.

The deputy chief of police in Yichun, surnamed Cui, admitted that he ordered the police on duty to control the four reporters, but he didn't know they were journalists, according to the Beijing News.

Cui said it took two hours to free the reporters because the police on duty could not reach him by phone due to bad signals.

Reporters flooded to Yichun after a Henan Airlines flight, with five crew members and 91 passengers aboard, crashed last Tuesday night at Lindu Airport in Yichun, killing 42 people.

The cause of the accident is still under investigation and doubts were raised about the safety of the air route where the crash occurred.

"After the accident, reporters were not allowed to interview injured passengers at the hospital," said Cui Muyang, a reporter with the Beijing News. "They said it in the name of victims' families."

"The police blocked us from entering the scene. They are afraid of cameras," Wang Wei, a journalist from the Shanghai-based Dongfang Daily, told the Global Times.

They are trampling on the public's right to know, as journalists have a responsibility to play a supervisory role for the public, Chen Zuoping, a journalism professor with the Communication University of China, told the Global Times.

"As long as journalists report in a legal and reasonable manner, there is no reason to detain them," Chen said.

At a national meeting in Beijing on lawful administration on Friday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao urged government departments to protect civilians' rights to directly supervise the government, and support media exposure on illegal activities and improper behavior by government officials.