The following propaganda directive was first published by Reporters Without Borders.
Shaanxi Provincial Committee Propaganda Department: Do not report on [journalist] Song Hailong being beaten at the Tongguan Bureau of Land and Resources. (June 29, 2013)
陕西省委宣传部：禁止报道宋海龙采访潼关国土局被打一事。
Song, a reporter for Guangdong’s New West magazine, had gone to investigate a number of deaths at a gold mine in Tongguan County, Shaanxi. When Song went to the county Bureau of Land Resources, bureau head Zhao Yongfeng allegedly had Song surrounded and beaten. People’s Daily reported in October that, while Zhao has since been removed from his position, the investigation into the beating is still ongoing [zh].
The news media are often given more leeway to report corruption outside of the organization’s own locale, while they are discouraged–or, in this case, forbidden–from covering issues at home.
Translation by Mengyu Dong.
Censorship Vault features previously untranslated propaganda instructions from the archives of the CDT series Directives from the Ministry of Truth (真理部指令).
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.
Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.
WAR IS PEACE • FREEDOM IS SLAVERY • IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
