BBC News website back online in China after blackout

Posted by KatyTaylor on 25 March 2008 at 16:18
Tags: Journalism

The Chinese authorities appear to have relaxed the strict media censorship that prevents its citizens accessing western websites, the Guardian has reported, writes Katy Taylor.

The English-language version of the BBC News site is now fully accessible throughout the country after years of ‘error’ messages being displayed instead.

Access is not granted to all the BBC’s sites, however. A BBC spokesperson told the paper: “It would seem though, for now at least, that the firewall remains in place for Chinese language services on the website and for the links in Chinese.”

Blackouts of guardian.co.uk, YouTube and Yahoo followed the recent unrest in Tibet, in what Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, called an “act of deliberate and wholly unacceptable censorship”.

As the violence broke out, it became apparent that a number of Chinese universities were censoring all Western websites.

YouTube came back online on Sunday - another indication that the grip on censorship is being eased.

Tags: Journalism