Senior editor Chang Ping forced out of Southern Media Group

Tania Branigan in The Guardian:

A leading Chinese journalist said he had been forced out of his job this week amid tightened restrictions on the media.

Zhang Ping, better known as Chang Ping, is an influential editor and columnist who had worked at the Southern Media Group - one of the country's best respected news organisations - for many years.

His departure has increased concerns that authorities, who already censor publications and broadcasts heavily, are clamping down harder on China's increasingly independent-minded journalists.

Zhang has repeatedly been punished for tackling sensitive issues and was banned from writing columns for the Southern Weekend and Southern Metropolis Daily newspapers last July.

Link picked by Danwei.org


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

China goes organic after scandal of cooking oil from sewers

Image
Organic food sales have taken off in China after a series of safety scares, including the disclosure that one in 10 meals is cooked using oil dredged from the sewer. Police inspect illegal cooking oil, better known as 'drainage oil', seized during a crackdown in Beijing Photo: AFP/GETTY By Malcolm Moore, Nanhui 9:00PM BST 30 Aug 2010 The Chinese now consume more than twice as much organic food as health-conscious Japan. The market is worth an annual 10billion yuan (£1billion) having quadrupled in the past five years. For comparison, the British organic market is worth roughly £2billion. Interest has been promoted by a series of scares including toxic beans, contaminated milk and pork, pesticide-laced dumplings, chemically-tainted chicken, and the growing presence of what is know...
Keep reading

Gang murders man then sues for compensation

BEIJING - An arrest warrant was approved on Tuesday for nine members of a gang who killed a mentally-disabled man and then used his death as a pretext to extort money from a mine boss.Prosecutors said that seven members of the gang were charged with intentional homicide, and two others, including the lone female suspect, surnamed Ri, were accused of fraud.Prosecutors in East China's Jiangxi province said that five suspects, including the leader of the gang, surnamed Lu, bought a young man with mental-health problems for 5,200 yuan ($800) from a human trafficker in March.The woman suspect Ri helped fabricate fake identification for the man, according to Dongxiang county police.With the documents, the five suspects took him to apply for a job at the Dongxiang County Lead and Zinc Mining Co Ltd, media reports said.On March 11, only a few days after getting injury insurance, two suspects, surnamed Zhang and Yang, took the young man to a 37-meter-deep vent and pushed him down.He died on...
Keep reading

8,000 affected by icy highway havoc

Image
A severe cold snap swept through South China and froze over sections of the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Freeway in Guangdong province starting Dec 15, bringing traffic to a standstill and stranding over 8,000, chinanews.com reported Friday. Trucks and cars drive slowly on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Freeway in Shaoguan county, South China's Guangdong province, Dec 16, 2010. [Photo/Chinanews.com] Ice started to crust over sections of the freeway in Shaoguan county of the province on Wednesday afternoon, as temperatures dropped to 3 degrees below zero. Traffic police launched an ice emergency response plan and traffic control on Thursday morning, when temperatures reached 5 below. Traffic troubles became worse later in the morning, as the ice on the road accumulated to over 5 centimeters. More vehicles became stranded in the jam. Police issued a more intense ice emergency response plan and closed some entrances to the freeway. As of Thursday night, more than 4,000 vehicles were delayed ...
Keep reading