China's Earthquake Coverage

More than a week after the earthquake in southwestern China, the death toll has climbed to over 40,000. The most moving and comprehensive English-language overview of how the first week was covered within China, on TV and on the Internet, comes from Deborah Fallows of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In Part 1 , she witnesses the opening up of Chinese media; what the Associated Press called "unusually aggressive" coverage from state media and a "less censored, an almost free flow of discussion," according to Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project. In Part 2, Fallows describes TV regressing to "functioning in lockstep," with carefully choreographed ceremonies. Outside the media, she finds a different kind of unity:

At 2:28 pm, I went outside our apartment building, alongside a big street and one of the major intersections of Beijing. Hundreds and hundreds of people left their offices, restaurants, and apartments to stand together to show respect with three minutes of silence. Cars stopped, and people got out to stand beside them or to look out over the bridges they were crossing. Jackhammers cased pounding; cranes stopped moving. People were checking mobile phones for the time. Then, on cue, horns from every single car began to sound. It was not honking, but one long, continuous wail. This apparently happened all across China. Then after three minutes, cars started up again, and jackhammers and bus horns, too. Young women wiped their eyes with the backs of their hands. I thought that for a few moments, the country had achieved its goal to be a "harmonious society," just as the Party has been trying to build—but at what a terrible cost.