China: Newspaper calls for media reform
2013-01-10 09:33
Guangzhou - A Chinese newspaper at the centre of a dispute over censorship
said on Thursday that Communist regulation of the media must "keep pace
with the times", in its first edition since the row began.
"It's fundamental that the party regulates the press, but its method of
regulation needs to be advanced to keep pace with the times," the Southern
Weekly said in an editorial, without making direct reference to the
controversy.
The row at the popular liberal paper, which had an article urging greater rights
protection replaced with one praising the ruling party, has seen demonstrators
mass outside its headquarters in the southern city of Guangzhou.
But the newspaper came out on Thursday as scheduled after reports of an
agreement between staff and authorities that officials would no longer directly
interfere in content before publication.
There was speculation that as part of the deal, Southern Weekly would not
give its account of the controversy.
'Updated methods'
In the event the editorial on press freedom was printed in small text, as a
commentary on another article on media management, reprinted from the People's
Daily, the Communist Party's mouthpiece.
The Southern Weekly said that because of the rising popularity of the internet,
China needed an "updated method of managing public opinion", and
called for "reasonable and constructive media" to be protected.
The paper's investigative reports have made it one of the biggest-selling in
China, with a keen following among urban intellectuals, but also left it
subject to periodic purges.
All Chinese media organisations receive instructions from government
propaganda departments, which suppress news seen as "negative" by the
Communist Party.
But the censorship of Southern Weekly was seen as unusually direct, although
the original article soon emerged on Chinese social media.
Open letters
Former journalists at the newspaper, as well as intellectuals and students
published open letters calling for the resignation of Tuo Zhen, the propaganda
official said to have been responsible.
At their peak on Monday the demonstrations, the first against press
censorship in two decades, drew hundreds of people and the campaign was backed
by the blogosphere and celebrities on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter.
Reports said that Hu Chunhua, the top Communist official in Guangdong
province, where the newspaper is based, and a rising star in the party, had
stepped in to mediate in the row.
There was no sign of protesters outside the newspaper's main office on
Thursday morning.
Thursday's edition led with a two-page investigation into a fire at an
orphanage in central China's Henan province, and devoted pages three and four
to a review of the most influential legal cases of 2012.
