Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Chinese media defy government ban

Chinese media outlets have ignored the government's ban on negative coverage of the July 23 Wenzhou bullet train crash, National Public Radio reported today.

In this unprecedented act of defiance, both commercial and state-run media reported on the crash for a week, and were even critical of how the government handled the disaster, in which 40 people were killed and many were injured, according to MediaGuardian.

On Friday, newspapers were told to not mention the crash “except positive news or information released by authorities,” The Irish Times reported.

Perhaps the most critical report came from the Economic Observer, which ran an eight-page report on the crash as well as a photo of the wrecked train overlaid with the railway ministry's logo in blood red, according to The Times. The report's title read “No miracles in Wenzhou,” and it also included an editorial written in the form of a letter to Xiang Weiyi, a two-year-old girl that was discovered alive in the wreckage 21 hours after the accident and after the search for survivors had been called off. Her parents were both killed in the crash.

The letter to the little girl has since been taken down from the Observer's website.

Image of the Economic Observer via MediaGuardian

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