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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.

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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.

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Complex tales of censorship in 20th-century Japan

The Southern Weekly newspaper, published in Chinas Guangdong province (Facebook)

Some Chinese journalists have stood up against state censorship and demanded the resignation of a propaganda chief after a New Year editorial calling for reforms was turned into a Communist Party tribute.

Thirty-five former journalists and 50 interns form the Southern Weekly newspaper in the eastern Guangdong province accused the local party propaganda chief Tuo Zhen of being "dictatorial" and called for him to quit, after the newspaper's annual feature was radically changed at the last minute.

Another 60 reporters signed a complaint letter, which accused Tuo of "raping" the newspaper's autonomy and added:

"If the media should lose credibility and influence, then how can the ruling party make its voice heard or convince its people?"

The original version of the Southern Weekly's traditionally bold New Year editorial called for democracy, freedom and the fulfilling of promises of libertarian reforms made by the 1982 constitution.

"The Chinese dream is the dream of constitutional rule," the original version read according to the newspaper's editors, Dai Zhiyong.

The tone of the article was first watered down by the newspaper's editorial staff in mutual agreement with the Party's censors, as part of the usual "editing" process.

The article was then twisted by a night blitz from the local censor office, leaving the journalists reportedly astonished, as they read the paper in the morning.

The new version was headlined "Dreams are our promise to what we need to accomplish" and claimed Chinese people were now closer to achieving their dreams thanks to the party leadership.

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China's Southern Weekly Journalists Stand Up Against “Raping” Party Censorship

BEIJING Chinese journalists reacted furiously Friday to what they said was heavy-handed official censorship of a New Years message from a popular Guangdong newspaper, setting up a crucial early challenge for new leader Xi Jinping.

The dispute began when the propaganda chief in the southern province, Tuo Zhen, apparently went behind the backs of the editors of the reform-minded paper Southern Weekly and directed that changes be made to the unsigned front-page piece. Tuo deleted some parts and inserted new passages in some places, adding factual errors after the papers top editors had signed off on the Jan. 2 article and gone home, several editors and reporters said later on their Twitter-like microblogs, called weibo.

Censorship of Chinas print media is a long-standing and ubiquitous practice, but having a government official actually rewrite an article before publication, and without consulting the editors, was considered an unusual intrusion even by Chinese standards.

The original message was titled Chinas dream, the dream of constitutionalism and it expressed the hope that China would become a country ruled by law and the constitution, according to the journalists. Only if constitutionalism is realized, and power effectively checked, can citizens voice their criticisms of power loudly and confidently, it said.

The version that appeared in the paper, however, was a sycophantic piece titled We are now closer to our dream than ever, which praised the work of the ruling Communist Party and omitted references to constitutionalism, democracy and equality.

Beijings censors tried to contain the resulting indignation by ordering all the weibo postings about the controversy deleted. According to the China Digital Times Web site, which tracks Chinese censorship issues, the Central Propaganda Department issued an urgent notice on Jan. 3 saying, Upon receipt of this message, controlling departments in all locales must immediately inform reporters and editors that they may not discuss the Southern Weekly New Years greeting on any public platforms.

The complaining journalists suddenly found their weibo posts deleted, and some had their accounts shut down.

But the controversy only intensified Friday with a rare open letter from a prominent group of former journalists affiliated with Southern Weekly calling Tuos actions dictatorial and also ignorant and excessive, according to a translation provided by the Hong Kong-based China Media Project, which studies mainland media issues. By late Friday, more than 50 former journalists had endorsed the letter.

The journalists letter directly criticized Tuo, a member of the Guangdong Communist Party Standing Committee with oversight of propaganda, saying, In this era in which hope is necessary, he is obliterating hope; in this era in which equality is yearned for, his actions are haughty and condescending; in this era of growing open-mindedness, his actions are foolish and careless.

The journalists added, If media lose all credibility and influence, then we ask, how is the ruling Party to speak? They also said that since Xis election, the general attitude at home and overseas ... has been one of optimism. But they asked whether the central government supported Tuos actions and demanded that he be deemed unsuitable for his position.

The rest is here:
Chinese journalists mount rare protest over an alleged act of government censorship