Mediaboss Marketing

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Scores of supporters of one of China's most liberal newspapers demonstrated outside its headquarters on Monday in a rare protest against censorship, backing an unusual strike by journalists against interference by the provincial propaganda chief.

The protest in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, comes amid an escalating standoff between the government and the people over press freedom. It is also an early test of Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping's commitment to reform.

The outcry began late last week after reporters at the influential Southern Weekly newspaper accused censors of replacing an original New Year's letter to readers that called for a constitutional government with another piece lauding the party's achievements.

Police allowed the demonstration outside the headquarters of the Southern Group, illustrating that the Guangdong government, led by newly appointed and rising political star Hu Chunhua, wants to tread carefully to contain rising public anger over censorship.

The protesters, most of them young, laid down small hand-written signs that said "freedom of expression is not a crime" and "Chinese people want freedom". Many clutched yellow chrysanthemums, symbolizing mourning the death of press freedom.

"The Nanfang (Southern) Media Group is relatively willing to speak the truth in China so we need to stand up for its courage and support it now," Ao Jiayang, a young NGO worker with bright orange dyed hair, told Reuters.

"We hope that through this we can fight for media freedom in China," Ao said. "Today's turnout reflects that more and more people in China have a civic consciousness."

The attention paid to the protest domestically highlights the unique position of Guangdong, China's wealthiest and most liberal province and the birthplace of the country's "reform and opening up" program. In a symbolic move, Xi chose to go to Guangdong on his first trip after being anointed party chief in November.

On Sunday night, the Southern Weekly official microblog denied the removal of the New Year Letter was due to censorship, saying the "online rumors were false". Those remarks drew criticism from Chinese Internet users.

Many Southern Weekly journalists disavowed themselves from the statement on the microblog, which they say was taken over by management, and pledged to go on strike the next day.

Excerpt from:
Chinese protest outside newspaper gates in rare censorship demo

Kyodo News via AP

A protester holds aloft a banner that shows freedom of speech near the headquarters of Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on Monday., Jan. 7, 2013. A dispute over censorship at the Chinese newspaper known for its edgy reporting became a political challenge for China's new leadership as protesters called for democratic reforms.

By NBC News staff and wire services

GUANGZHOU, China -- Scores of supporters of one of China's most liberal newspapers demonstrated outside its headquarters on Monday in a rare protest against censorship, backing an unusual strike by journalists against interference by the provincial propaganda chief.

The protest in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, came amid an escalating standoff between the government and the people over press freedom. It is also an early test of Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping's commitment to reform.

Negotiations between journalists and officials, whom the protesters held responsible for replacing a New Year's letter to readers that called for a constitutional government with another piece lauding the party's achievements, continued into the night, a senior journalist who asked not to be named told NBC News.

Police allowed the demonstration outside the headquarters of the Southern Group, illustrating that the Guangdong government, led by new appointee and rising political star Hu Chunhua, wants to tread carefully to contain rising public anger over censorship.

The protesters, most of them young, laid down small handwritten signs that said "freedom of expression is not a crime" and "Chinese people want freedom."

China Nobel winner Mo Yan likens censorship to airport security

Many clutched yellow chrysanthemums, symbolizing mourning the death of press freedom.

More here:
Chinese protest censorship

Kyodo News via AP

A protester holds aloft a banner that shows freedom of speech near the headquarters of Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on Monday., Jan. 7, 2013. A dispute over censorship at the Chinese newspaper known for its edgy reporting became a political challenge for China's new leadership as protesters called for democratic reforms.

By NBC News staff and wire services

GUANGZHOU, China -- Scores of supporters of one of China's most liberal newspapers demonstrated outside its headquarters on Monday in a rare protest against censorship, backing an unusual strike by journalists against interference by the provincial propaganda chief.

The protest in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, came amid an escalating standoff between the government and the people over press freedom. It is also an early test of Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping's commitment to reform.

Negotiations between journalists and officials, whom the protesters held responsible for replacing a New Year's letter to readers that called for a constitutional government with another piece lauding the party's achievements, continued into the night, a senior journalist who asked not to be named told NBC News.

Police allowed the demonstration outside the headquarters of the Southern Group, illustrating that the Guangdong government, led by new appointee and rising political star Hu Chunhua, wants to tread carefully to contain rising public anger over censorship.

The protesters, most of them young, laid down small handwritten signs that said "freedom of expression is not a crime" and "Chinese people want freedom."

China Nobel winner Mo Yan likens censorship to airport security

Many clutched yellow chrysanthemums, symbolizing mourning the death of press freedom.

More:
Chinese protesters stage rare censorship demo

London, Jan. 6 (ANI): Google has reluctantly conceded defeat in its latest effort to combat online censorship in China.

Google's move comes after a year of behind-the-scenes brinkmanship over sensitive search terms banned by authorities.

The searching giant quietly dropped a warning message shown to Chinese users when they search for politically sensitive phrases, after Beijing found new ways to cut them off from the web, the Guardian reports.

According to the report, Google and Chinese authorities have been involved in a tense game of cat-and-mouse over the issue since May last year, when the feature was unveiled by the US company in an attempt to improve search for Chinese citizens.

The standoff came to a head in December, when Google finally decided to drop the feature because users were still being disconnected by Chinese authorities.

A source in China said Google decided it was 'counterproductive' to continue the technical dispute, despite several attempts to get around it, the report said.

A Google spokesman confirmed it removed the notification features in December, but declined to comment further due to the sensitivity of the situation in China, it added.

In November, Google's English-language and Chinese-language services were blocked for 24 hours as tensions stepped up.

Google resolved to drop the notification features in early December after users continued to report problems for certain searches, the report added. (ANI)

Go here to read the rest:
Google concedes defeat in combating online censorship in China

Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013

THE ART OF CENSORSHIP IN POSTWAR JAPAN, by Kirsten Cather. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 342 pp., $45.00 (hardcover)

REDACTED: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan, by Jonathan E. Abel. University of California Press, 2012, 376 pp., $44.95 (hardcover)

Censorship in Japan has long been hot-button topic for everyone from journalists reporting on the latest police porn crackdown to academics delving into wartime controls on artistic expression, but as Kirsten Cather notes in "The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan" her fluently written, industriously researched study of seven postwar obscenity trials the writer's intent is often to score points off the evil censors, not examine the actualities and implications of each side's argument.

Cather has thus set out to examine "the often-overlooked connection between the censor and critic, a link that is crucial to understanding the dynamic relationship of censor, artist and text in modern Japan." In these landmark trials, prosecutors have frequently played the role of, as Cather puts it, "narratologists, reception theorists, critics, editors, or even coauthors (or auteurs)," basing judgments on criteria that shift from case to case, era to era.

Following Japan's World War II defeat in 1945, the U.S.-led Occupation assumed the mantle of censor, while officially encouraging freedom of expression. But in the first postwar obscenity trial, which started in 1951 over an unauthorized translation of the D.H. Lawrence novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover," the Japanese prosecutors were firmly in charge, if at first hesitant about how exactly to proceed since the new constitution, written under Occupation aegis, expressly forbade censorship. They took recourse in Article 175 of the prewar Criminal Code, which defined "obscene objects" as those that "produce the sense of shame or disgust in human beings."

Naturally, the defense argued that the new constitution took precedence over a Meiji Era (1868-1912) statute, but the trial, as Cather describes in blow-by-blow detail, was hardly as simple as legally determining who was on first. By the time the Supreme Court handed down its guilty verdict in 1957, the Constitution-vs.-Article-175 debate had long been overshadowed by the judges' concern, backed by the prosecution's supposedly "rational" evidence (including lie detector tests purporting to measure sexual response), that the book indeed titillated readers in socially dangerous ways. "At the core of the guilty verdict," Cather notes, "was the fear that readers would uncritically identify with unscrupulous fictional characters." Lady Chatterley, c'est moi.

This landmark trial set a precedent that strongly influenced subsequent obscenity cases, despite differences in medium and shifts in social mores. Judges were concerned with protecting "innocent" readers or viewers, particularly if they were young and female. Also, realism, be it of imagery or description, continued to be cited as contributing to a work's perceived obscenity. Fiction, even of Lawrence's highbrow sort, was considered worse than "scientific" depictions, since a skillful writer could conjure visions in a reader's head more compellingly actual than any anatomical drawing. Lastly, the triumph of the "native" criminal code over the "foreign" constitution in the trial proved lasting.

Verdicts in succeeding obscenity trials were hardly uniform, however. Tetsuji Takeuchi's pioneering 1965 pinku (soft-core porn) film "Black Snow" was ruled obscene by the High Court, since the judges regarded its cinematic pornography as more dangerous than the printed variety, while dismissing its "redemptive" ending as too little, too late. On the other hand, a 1972-1980 trial prompted by four soft-core films released by the Nikkatsu studio under its Roman Porno label ended in victory for the defense. This time the prosecution overreached by indicting not only filmmakers, but also the industry self-censorship board Eirin, which had given their work its seal of approval. The High Court judges ended up acquitting everyone, while praising Eirin for maintaining a "minimum degree of sexual morality."

All this will be fascinating to not only students of censorship, but anyone interested in Japanese society's evolving attitudes toward freedom of expression including the freedom to be violently pornographic. Cather has succeeded admirably in presenting the complexity of an ongoing legal debate between censor and censored, as well as the social, political and cultural backdrop of her selected cases.

Go here to read the rest:
Complex tales of censorship in 20th-century Japan