Before yesterday’s press conference by Premier Wen Jiabao, in which he spoke for over two and a half hours on a range of topics, the Central Propaganda Department issued the following directive to journalists:
中宣部： 各报明天关于温总理记者见面会的报道，一律发新华社通稿，不可擅自增加内容，更不可延伸评论。
March 13, 2012,
Central Propaganda Department: To all newspapers. Regarding Premier Wen’s press conference tomorrow, only general reports from Xinhua can be used. It is forbidden to arbitrarily add content, and extended commentaries are strictly forbidden.
Examples of censorship instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to those instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation. See all translated Directives from the Ministry of Truth posts from CDT.
