China blocks news coverage of HS train crash
Posted: 01 Aug 2011, 11:23
From Business Day, 01 August 2011 http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/C ... ?id=149640
China blocks news of bullet train crash
China has imposed a widespread ban on coverage of last week’s high-speed train crash, forcing newspapers across the country to scrap pages of stories.
"All local media, including newspapers, magazines and websites, must rapidly cool down the reports of the incident".
FOREIGN STAFF
Published: 2011/08/01 08:18:02 AM
CHINA has imposed a widespread ban on coverage of last week’s high-speed train crash, forcing newspapers across the country to scrap pages of stories, a Hong Kong newspaper reported yesterday.
The Sunday Morning Post said propaganda authorities had issued a censorship order late on Friday, banning all coverage of the crash "except positive news or information released by the authorities".
China’s state news agency, Xinhua, has denied widespread rumours that railway authorities tried to conceal evidence by burying carriages damaged during the high- speed rail crash.
The crash has sparked criticism that China has put its development before public safety, and authorities are struggling to contain the anti- government backlash.
The ban also came after state media published rare criticism of authorities over their response to the July 23 crash, which killed at least 40 and injured almost 200.
"After the serious rail traffic accident on July 23, overseas and domestic public opinions have become increasingly complicated," the order from the publicity department of the Communist Party said, according to the Post.
"All local media, including newspapers, magazines and websites, must rapidly cool down the reports of the incident."
The sudden ban sent to newspaper and web editors forced the China Business Journal to scrap eight pages of its newspaper, the Post reported, while the 21st Century Business Herald had to scrap 12 and the Beijing News nine.
The papers had planned special coverage to mark the seventh day after the disaster, the report said.
The ban was the second since the fatal crash, after propaganda authorities a day after the accident forbade local journalists from questioning the official line, according to the US-based China Digital Times.
That order was widely ignored. An opinion piece in the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, on Thursday argued that China "needs development, but does not need blood-smeared GDP". Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged an "open and transparent" probe.
-- Sapa-AFP