Bo Xilai Scandal: How news breaks in China
Chinese censors worked overtime to squelch reports of the downfall of former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai and the arrest of his wife on murder charges. But savvy journalists and Internet users stayed with the story and soon it commanded international headlines. Click through the timeline to see how a tightly censored story still made…
China’s new leadership faces censorship challenge
New York, March 11, 2013–China’s new leaders will face unprecedented challenges to controlling the media, even as journalists’ efforts to test the system continue to carry great risk, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ’s report, “Challenged in China: The shifting dynamics of censorship and control,” finds that cracks in…
CPJ Impact
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists, February 2013 CPJ launches 2013 edition of Attacks on the Press An unprecedented rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned in the past year coupled with restrictive legislation and state censorship is jeopardizing independent reporting in many countries, according to Attacks on the Press, CPJ’s yearly…
Attacks on the Press in 2012: China
As the leadership handed over power to new Communist Party appointees in a November congress, censors aggressively blocked coverage of dissent, including reports on blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng’s escape from house arrest. Coverage of corruption was tightly controlled in foreign and domestic media. The New York Times and Bloomberg News were censored domestically after…
Southern Weekly journalists air anger with Chinese censors
Staffers at the Guangdong-based Southern Weekly magazine have publicly expressed their outrage at the heavy handed intervention of propaganda officials who unilaterally rewrote a New Year’s editorial calling for improved constitutional rule in China. A piece extolling the virtues of the Communist Party ran in its place. Sixty staffers posted an open letter to the provincial government…
China’s Xi Jinping unseen, unsearchable
It was only a matter of time before Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s physical absence from the public view was accompanied by his disappearance from cyberspace. The characters “Jinping” from his name were censored today from searches of Sina’s microblog service Weibo, according to the Fei Chang Dao blog. Where else but China does a…