Serious Propaganda Discipline Violation
Or devastatingly poor taste. Though we might need to see the art and some copy to make an informed judgment on this one. Chinese mag shut down for printing sexy quake shots:
Beijing – A Chinese magazine has been shut down for printing pictures of scantily clad women posing in rubble for a special report on the country’s devastating earthquake, officials said on Wednesday.
The New Travel Weekly, a small lifestyle magazine, ran photos of sultry models in their underwear amid the debris in an issue that hit the stands on Monday – the first of three days of national mourning.
The press and publication department of the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the magazine was based, said it decided to close the magazine down for “rectification”.
The department said the magazine “seriously violated propaganda discipline and went against social morals” and the report constituted an “extremely evil social influence.”
“If the outcome of the rectification is satisfactory, it is possible to reopen the magazine,” an employee of the press and publication department with the family name Cai said.
”After all, only part of the staff made the decision to print that shoot. It wouldn’t be fair to just close it for good.”
The company that manages The New Travel Weekly said it had sacked the magazine’s managing editor, editor and deputy editor, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
“Rectification” is an unfortunate near-homonym that metaphorically probably pretty well describes what these idiots editors are going through right now. Hopefully no one gets shot, anyway, which is what usually happens when China is internationally humiliated.
A quick google of “chinese magazine quake sexy models” turned up no art or magazine copy and the story offers nothing on what surely must have been an effort to … I dunno … humanize the tragedy, boost reader interest, sell magazines, something like that.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:45 pm Comments (1) on Wednesday, May 21, 2008
One Response to “Serious Propaganda Discipline Violation”
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May 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 am
Google and the Chinese government are in bed together, so it’s a fair bet that your quest for fair ladies of the Chinese variety was quashed at the source.
Pity.