NightBlogger

Wall Street Journal
HONG KONG — Aggressive Chinese bloggers make an art of challenging Chinese government propaganda. This week, they can claim a victory. On Friday, Chinese authorities announced that four Communist Party, local government and security officials in Guizhou province’s Weng’an county were sacked for “severe malfeasance” over the alleged coverup of a murder, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

That change in stance appears to be a direct result of pressure brought by journalists and Chinese bloggers such as Zhou Shuguang, a self-styled “personal news station,” who didn’t allow the issue to drop, posting to the Internet unofficial reports along with photos and pleas from the family of the dead youth. When mainstream Chinese Web sites began deleting posts on the issue, some bloggers turned to technical workarounds, including writing their posts backwards and reposting material that had been taken down elsewhere.

Exposed to online postings that sprout up and multiply before they can be censored, the public has come to expect more transparency and responsiveness from the government. China is home to 223 million Internet users, according to official statistics, nearly as many as the U.S. More
Also See: Chinese riot over police ‘cover-up’

Journalists in the Gaza Strip held a symbolic work stoppage as part of a protest to demand that Israel explain why its troops killed a Reuters cameraman in the Palestinian enclave two months ago to the day. The demonstration, during which journalists laid down their cameras, came on a day when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will unveil a memorial dedicated to journalists killed while reporting on wars around the world. Reuters Middle East Managing Editor Mark Thompson said: “We are deeply disappointed that the Israeli army has failed to provide an account of the circumstances in which Fadel Shana was killed by a tank shell on April 16, nor any evidence to support its claim that they could not identify him as a journalist. More

CNN
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP)
Phones are tapped and the few foreign journalists inside Myanmar are operating in secret, making it dangerous and difficult to tell the story of the cyclone that has devastated the Southeast Asian country. “This government is very paranoid, very xenophobic and they think this cyclone could undermine their credibility,” said Aung Zaw, editor of Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based magazine and Web site put out by exiled Myanmar journalists. Read more