It was a proud logo that the Beijing News team put on their masthead when they launched the feisty tabloid two years ago. But it seems that even this small symbolic statement was too much for the omnipresent censors-in-chief in the Communist Party's propaganda department - or the Publicity Department, as it likes to call itself. The logo is round, in reference to both eyeballs and the globe, indicating the paper watches events from a global perspective. On it a flame burns on the Great Wall, harking back to ancient times when sentries used torches to warn of approaching invaders. Beneath the image ran six tiny Chinese characters that said: 'Responsible to report everything.' They sat on the masthead for almost two years and bothered no one, but all of a sudden the publicity department apparently considered them to be fighting words. Just a few days before the paper celebrated its second anniversary last week, the department ordered the slogan stripped from the logo, according to sources at the paper. The imagery still runs on the masthead, but without the accompanying text it looks odd, like a crooked painting hanging on a wall. I wanted to ask the Publicity Department why such an innocuous phrase would be considered off limits in modern China, but interview requests have been ignored. The frustration that Chinese journalists and intellectuals feel about the dictatorial, unaccountable body was best summed up last year in a long, scathing internet essay by Peking University journalism professor Jiao Guobiao . 'The nature of its work is the complete opposite of that of a modern civilisation. Where else can you find propaganda departments? Not in the US, the UK or Europe,' he wrote. 'But you did find them in Nazi Germany, where Goebbels said 'a lie that is repeated 1,000 times becomes the truth'.' He said the department was essentially unconstitutional, and accused its officials of covering up famines, corruption and disease outbreaks: 'Their censorship orders are totally groundless, absolutely arbitrary, at odds with the basic standards of civilisation, and as counter to scientific common sense as witches and wizardry.' Professor Jiao, not surprisingly, is no longer gainfully employed with the nation's most prestigious university. For those who want to stay working in the mainland's media sphere, there are games that have to be played. Challenging them head-on does not appear to boost career prospects. Some editors say that, on days big stories are breaking, they turn off their mobile phones and tell secretaries to inform callers that they are out of town - hoping to avoid a direct censorship order before the story is printed. And even though the market is intensely competitive these days, editors say they will occasionally share sensitive scoops with competitors in the hope - through strength in numbers - of softening the backlash from the Publicity Department. The department is widely seen as an anachronistic hangover from the past which is ultimately fighting a losing battle: most sensitive information manages to seep out despite its pathological paranoia. Meanwhile, on cigarette breaks, the wags at the Beijing News now try to come up with alternative slogans that might more accurately reflect reality and win official approval. For now, a favourite among some hacks is: 'Not responsible to report everything.' But the majority seems to prefer the more detailed: 'Responsible to report the news we are allowed to report.' Perhaps the newspaper boys should shout out '[You can't] read all about it' to echo the new, more honest marketing drive. Peter Goff is a Beijing-based journalist
