Chinese journalists protest censorship

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Crowds gathered at the headquarters of a Chinese newspaper on Monday, in support of a rare protest by journalists against alleged government censorship.

The journalists at the Southern Weekly paper, based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, claim that an editorial calling for political reform was censored by and re-written as a tribute to Communist Party rule.

Photos published by the South China Morning Post and circulated on China's most popular microblogging site Sina Weibo showed dozens of people gathering outside the paper's headquarters, some holding posters calling for press freedom.

One journalist from Southern Media Group, which owns Southern Weekly, told CNN that colleagues joined the protest to express their outrage.

"We stand up now because we were pushed to the limit," the journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, said.

Some journalists have threatened to strike. If it goes ahead, it would be the first time an editorial staff of a major Chinese newspaper has openly staged a strike in more than two decades, the South China Morning Post reported.

The controversy emerged last week when a group of former Southern Weekly journalists said, in an open letter, that a local propaganda chief had dramatically altered the paper's traditional New Year message, according to a translation published by the China Media Project at Hong Kong University.

While newspapers in China are often subject to censorship, the journalists wrote in the letter that the changes were excessive, and took place after editors had signed off on the final proofs.

The letter also said that the official had introduced factual errors.

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Chinese journalists protest censorship