{"id":31787,"date":"2013-01-04T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=31787 "},"modified":"2013-01-04T22:40:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-04T22:40:00","slug":"31787-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=31787","title":{"rendered":"Southern Weekly reporters confront China censors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Writers of the Southern Weekly newspaper say Guangdong’s propaganda chief is “dictatorial”<\/div>
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Journalists at a leading Chinese newspaper have called for a propaganda chief to resign, in a rare protest against censorship.<\/div>
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Prominent former staff and interns at the Southern Weekly urged the official to quit after he changed an editorial into a Communist Party tribute.<\/div>
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They accused him of being “dictatorial” in an era of “growing openness”.<\/div>
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The row comes as the website of a liberal journal was closed, after it ran an essay urging political reform.<\/div>
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The influential online magazine, Yanhuang Chunqiu (or China Through the Ages), had called on China’s leaders to guarantee constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and assembly.<\/div>
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Correspondents say the censorship row is an early test of whether China’s new leaders, announced in November, will be open to reforms.<\/div>
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‘Crude’<\/div>
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The row at the Southern Weekly – known for hard-hitting investigations and testing the limits of censorship – erupted after a new year editorial calling for guaranteed constitutional rights was changed at the last minute to one extolling the virtues of the Communist Party.<\/div>
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In two open letters, 35 prominent former staff and 50 interns at the paper have demanded the resignation of the provincial propaganda chief in Guangdong, Tuo Zhen.<\/div>
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They said the move amounted to “crude” interference.<\/div>
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“If the media should lose credibility and influence, then how can the ruling party make its voice heard or convince its people?” a letter on Friday said.<\/div>
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The Yanhuang Chunqiu website became a page with a message saying it has been closed<\/div>
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BBCChinese.com editor Zhuang Chen says it is thought to be the first time there has been a direct showdown between newspaper staff and party officials.<\/div>
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On China’s popular microblogging site Sina Weibo, dozens of search terms involving the Southern Weekly controversy are reportedly being filtered.<\/div>
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There are reports of many users being suspended from the service.<\/div>
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A foreign ministry spokeswoman said China did not censor news.<\/div>
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While state media have been trying to paint the country’s new leaders as reform-minded, the authorities have been clamping down on dissent, the BBC’s Martin Patience in Beijing says.<\/div>
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Many reformers argue that without greater freedom of expression and – more grassroots democracy – the Communist Party could face serious unrest or worse, our correspondent adds.<\/div>
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Chinese media are supervised by so-called propaganda departments, which often change content to align it with party thinking.<\/div>
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Beijing also uses extensive internet controls, known asthe “Great Firewall of China”, to block access to material considered subversive or pornographic.<\/div>
 <\/div> Continue reading <\/span>the<\/span><\/a> original article<\/a>. <\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/strong>
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<div>Journalists at a leading Chinese newspaper have called for a propaganda chief to resign, in a rare protest against censorship.Prominent former staff and interns at the Southern Weekly urged the official to quit after he changed an editorial into a Communist Party tribute.<\/div><div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}