State Control

The Iranian government has shut down four publications, including a major reformist newspaper, according to reports. The reformist daily, Shargh, or East, was shut down Monday indefinitely because it had refused to replace its managing director apart from publishing a cartoon in a recent edition that was considered insulting to the government, state television said, citing a statement from the...

BEIJING, Sept 12 (Reuters) - International press groups denounced new Chinese curbs on the dissemination of foreign news as a step backwards ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when thousands of journalists will descend on the country's capital. The official Xinhua news agency announced rules on Sunday requiring foreign media to seek its approval with immediate effect to distribute news, pictures...

China has announced new controls over the distribution of news, photographs and graphics by foreign news agencies, further restricting foreign access to the already tightly regulated Chinese media market. The new measures took effect immediately upon being issued by the government's Xinhua News Agency. WALLPAPER: A man reads a wall newspaper in Beijing. China has released new rules governing the...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has shut down a Chinese magazine's outspoken Web site, apparently because of the reported killing of a villager trying to stop demolition of his home, the editor said on Thursday. The online edition of the Baixing (People) Magazine, based in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, was closed on Wednesday, editor Huang Liantian told Reuters. The Web site contained reports...

CHINA is planning to bring more honesty and transparency in reporting newspaper circulation data as it launches an inspection on the circulation figures in newspapers from 11 cities, Xinhua news agency reported. These cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Chengdu, said a circular released ahead of the 2007 newspaper circulation season by the General Administration of...

An Apple Inc subcontractor has slashed a libel claim against two Shanghai journalists, who said workers at a plant making iPods were mistreated, from 30 million yuan ($3.77 million) to just 1 yuan (12 cents) to avoid a major PR disaster. BACKGROUND MUSIC: A woman rides a bicycle past advertisements of Apple Computer's iPod in this Friday, August 18, 2006 file photo in Shanghai, China. Apple...

A Chinese court jailed a reporter for a Singapore newspaper for five years on Thursday on a charge of spying, the latest in a series of high-profile cases underscoring China's curbs on the media and dissent. RELEASE HIM: Pro-democracy demonstrators and local legislators hold photos of jailed journalist Ching Cheong as they rally outside the Chinese Liaison office in Hong Kong. The recent jailing...

China's bloggers—33.4 million strong at last count, and growing fast—can be an unforgiving bunch when something displeases them. In recent weeks a Western English teacher in Shanghai whose blog, Chinabounder, described his sexual conquests of Chinese women drew the venom of netizens and prompted a frenzy of nationalist outrage, including castration threats and calls by a Shanghai Academy of Social...

Foreign newspapers will not be allowed to print on the mainland, a senior official has said, stressing the issue was "complicated". Yu Yongzhan, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication (Gapp), told the South China Morning Post that the administration had studied the possibility of allowing foreign newspapers to print on the mainland, but had decided against it at...

Richard Li, son of Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing, has bought a controlling stake in an esteemed Hong Kong newspaper, raising fears among journalists and lawmakers for its editorial independence. The Hong Kong Economic Journal, first published in 1973, is widely respected for its independent, critical and rational views and has a reputation as a paper of choice for the southern Chinese city's...