In Nieman Reports, Phoenix TV editor Luwei (Rose) Luqiu writes about her experience of writing a blog on Sina.com:
In China, the Internet enjoys relatively greater freedom than other media. Even so, three articles I posted on my blog vanished without notice. The Sina editor told me the government’s Internet monitors took them away. This also happened with my blog on the Phoenix Web site, where sometimes I’ve not been able even to post my article. The editor at Phoenix told me this was because of a key word search that revealed my piece, and this is also how those other articles disappeared.
What’s written on blogs can also lead me to news stories. Only a few days after I started my blog, someone in the city of Harbin wrote the following message to me: “It was rumored that the city government was going to shut down the water supply and people started to panic.” These words reminded me of the explosion in a refinery plant at the neighboring city about 10 days earlier and how they might have caused the river to become polluted. I checked with my local contacts, and they confirmed that the local government issued the notice but without giving a reason. I sent a crew to the scene, and the result was a big story that we broadcast long before other media were reporting about this disaster. Only after China’s official news media, Xinhua, confirmed the pollution later that day did other news media go with the story. [Full text]
– Luwei (Rose) Luqiu’s blog on Sina is here.
