China

Two Guangzhou-based journalists, who advocate for political reform amid tightening restrictions on free expression, have been dismissed. While several bloggers and activists have disappeared or been detained in the last month after anonymous calls for demonstrations in support of political reform were published online, journalists in traditional media are now also being targeted, according to New...

The secret sentencing of a Uighur website editor emerged this week, eight months after he was tried along with other journalists and dissidents charged in the 2009 unrest in northwestern Xinjiang, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. A court in the far-western district of Aksu sentenced Tursunjan Hezim, who edited a well-known Uighur website, Bilik, to seven years in prison on...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has rejected statements by a Chinese government official that international reporters are not being detained, attacked, and harassed in China. CPJ called on the police to end their anti-media attempts to stop foreign journalists from reporting on possible anti-government demonstrations in what has become known as the...

Chinese security officials' concerted attack on the foreign press in a busy commercial street near Tiananmen Square in Beijing Sunday is a return to the restrictions international reporters faced before they were eased in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. Police briefly detained more than a dozen foreign journalists and assaulted at least two at the site of a planned anti-government protest in...

A Bloomberg News journalist was assaulted Sunday in Beijing while covering the deployment of police in response to online calls for protests in the Chinese capital, the agency reported. At least five men in plain clothes, who appeared to be security personnel, punched and kicked the reporter at Beijing’s Wangfujing shopping street at 2:45 p.m. local time Sunday. They also took the video camera he...

Chinese journalists are to undergo six-month training courses that will teach them how to “eradicate false news, improve the feeling of social responsibility and reinforce journalistic ethics.” The initiative comes from the Propaganda Department, directly linked to the Communist Party, and follows its announcement of 10 directives relating to the press in 2011. “In short, to make journalists...

A Chinese journalist known for being critical of the government said Friday that he's been fired by one of the country's most daring media companies for refusing to tone down his writing, the latest sign of China's tightening grip on press freedom, Canadian Press has reported. Chang Ping, a former editor and columnist for publications owned by the Southern Media Group, said the dismissal wasn't...

China’s Propaganda Department, which is under the direct orders of the country’s Communist Party, has marked the New Year with a series of directives to the media. Regarded as state secrets, they have been delivered by word of mouth to journalists at meetings where note-taking has been banned. However, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has obtained details of the...

The People’s Daily newspaper, published by the Communist Party of China, may lead a wave of state-run media going public as the government aims to reinvigorate official news organisations in the next five years, according to Bloomberg News. People’s Daily Online Co Ltd., which operates the website People.com.cn, plans to sell 40 million shares at a price range of 15 yuan to 20 yuan a share in an...

The death of Sun Hongjie, a senior reporter at the Northern Xinjiang Morning Post, must be fully investigated by regional authorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and by central authorities in Beijing, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Sun died in a hospital in Kuitun today, 10 days after being beaten by several men at a construction site, international news...