Nothing to see, comrades

Scripps Howard: Even for China’s skilled censors stuffing this particular incident down the national memory hole is going to be a tough assignment.

Employees of China’s national TV network, celebrating the lunar new year with illegal fireworks, managed to lob a skyrocket onto the roof of a nearly complete ultramodern hotel adjoining their own headquarters building.

The resulting fire gutted the 44-story structure leaving a charred, smoking shell looming over the Beijing skyline. Despite their complicity in the blaze, you would think this would be a real break for China TV’s reporters: How great is it to be able to cover one of the biggest stories of the year simply by looking out your office window?

Government directive

But China’s ever alert propaganda office immediately issued a directive: “No photos, no videos, no in-depth reports.” News outlets were instructed to use only the bare bones dispatches from Xinhua, the official news agency.

According to The New York Times, there were no photos of the fire on the front page of The Beijing News; on its home page, Xinhua led with a story out of South Korea; China TV carried only brief bulletins and no videos of the conflagration next door.

Unfortunately, technology, the bane of the censors’ existence prevailed, and amateur photos and videos circulated by cell phone and e-mail and were posted on the Internet faster than the authorities could block them.