Las chinese authorities This week, two digital media outlets that had published reports critical of the management of the coronavirus pandemic were censored. covid-19 and with the situation of journalism in the Asian country.
the accounts of Health Insight y Media Camp on Chinese social media were suspended on Monday night without any explanation being offered, the Hong Kong daily reported. South China Morning Post.
The internet regulator in the Asian country, the Cyberspace Administration of Chinaannounced last March a campaign to “strictly regulate the chaos” of what the authorities call “self-published media,” a concept that includes accounts that disseminate information in social networks or blogs.
Health Insight, which since its founding in 2018 published content on the social networks Wechat, Weibo and Zhihu, it was one of the said “self-published media”, specialized in health information.
“This account has been blocked, the content cannot be viewed,” now reports a notice on his official Wechat account.
Health Insight reported on the covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan (center) in early 2020 and also on the death of doctor Li Wenliangwho had tried to warn about the danger of the new pathogen.
He also investigated issues to which the official press did not devote much attention during the validity of the policy of ‘zero covid’such as the lack of medical evidence to support the use of Lianhua Qingwen, a traditional medicine recommended by some Chinese experts to treat covid-19, or the mental health impact of lockdown prolonged in Shanghái in the spring of 2022.
Likewise, the header was critical of the use of public funds to cover the costs of the ‘zero covid’ policy and addressed other problems in the Chinese health system, such as competition between public hospitals or the increase in the cost of prescription drugs.
The other medium censored this week, Media Camp, is a public Wechat account founded by investigative journalists that published several articles about the difficulties faced by Chinese reporters.
A recent article looked at the case of a journalist who was beaten by police while covering an accident that killed two teachers in the central province of Guizhou.
China, one of the world’s most hostile places for journalists, ranked 175th out of 180 countries in a 2022 press freedom list published by Reporters Without Borders.
