Chinese media face censors

Jan 5, 2013- Some Chinese print media have been under pressure to rewrite articles calling for political reform.

Nanfang Zhoumo is a newspaper in the southern province of Guangdong, known as the Southern Weekly. It was reportedly forced to rewrite a New Year editorial calling for democracy and freedom of speech.

The article, titled "China's Dream; the Dream of the Constitutionalism," was to be on the front page of its New Year edition on Thursday.

Sources say local authorities demanded significant changes. Words such as "freedom" and "democracy" were removed and the article was rewritten to affirm the present situation.

The original article and the censored version are now circulated on the Internet.

Journalists formerly affiliated with the newspaper jointly published an open letter demanding the resignation of the official who ordered the change, as well as an apology.

The website of a Beijing magazine, Yanhuang Chunqiu, has been offline since Friday. The magazine ran an article in its New Year issue calling for urgent political reform toward democracy.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported the Communist Party publicity department issued a policy at a meeting on Friday to further spread the official views of the party and government.