DUJIANGYAN, CHINA — China has begun rolling back many of the media and online freedoms that were permitted in the immediate aftermath of last month's earthquake.
Restrictions on foreign and domestic reporters have been tightened in recent days. Web discussion groups have seen postings deleted. Internet filtering has been stepped up.
The propaganda ministry and the State Council, China's Cabinet, have issued directives to state-run news media outlining forbidden topics. Among them: questions about school construction, whether government rescue efforts lagged and whether Beijing knew in advance that the earthquake would happen but failed to warn people. Although the latter issue is scientifically questionable, it has nonetheless transfixed millions of Chinese Internet users.
The tough stance, which has included crackdowns on public protest, reflects in part the changing nature of the story surrounding the magnitude 7.9 temblor that left about 70,000 people dead in Sichuan province, media analysts say.
In the first weeks after the quake, the main narrative was the heroic efforts of rescue workers, the plight of trapped victims and the shock to a nation. The positive story line helped unify the people and helped humanize China's image abroad when it was struggling to recover from criticism of its crackdown in Tibet and surrounding regions.
Now, however, the disaster has entered a more politically complex stage as national and foreign criticism mounts over issues of corruption, embezzlement and the government's response to the large number of schools that collapsed.
Amid the unimaginable human suffering, media analysts said, the government is carefully calculating how much freedom it will allow and what message to convey. As it does, it is embracing sophisticated media management techniques and easing away from the far more heavy-handed methods of the past.
In one apparent bid to chill coverage, the state-run New China News Agency and a prominent TV host have sharply criticized an investigative newspaper that has run stories on local officials saving themselves first and on a provincial education official acknowledging that poor school construction was a factor in the high death rate among children.
The news agency ran a prominent commentary accusing the Southern Weekend paper, based in the southern province of Guangdong, of using "tinted glasses to view China."
