[via Kevin Drum] 

A hilarious look from James Fallows at what it is like to be a member of the media in China (or at least have your work heard):

If you’re actually exposed to the info-machine day by day, the image that occurs is not the suave Zhou but instead Scott McClellan, flop-sweating his way through an agonizing White House press conference.

….Here is today’s illustration: official sources have been trying to claim recently that the worldwide press is happy with the government’s current level of openness. The worldwide press generally disagrees. So this evening CNN International carried a story on the dispute. And just as the anchor began to say, “International complaints about media access in China have continued. From Beijing…” the screen went blank. Two minutes of white-noise on the screen, then the signal returning when it was time for the weather report.

Clever! Wily, even. And no one would possibly notice! Far more effective in damping down complaints about press controls than actually showing the report would have been. America has problems in getting its image across these days, but it’s not the only one.