The Guardian
The Guardian’s website has been blocked in China, according to a story Wednesday by Jonathan Kalman for The Guardian. Access to the newspaper’s site still worked on tablets and mobile devices, he reported, and some users wrote that they’d been able to access the page.
The reasons for the Guardian block are unclear – no China-related stories published by the Guardian in the past two days would obviously be perceived as dangerous by the country’s leadership. One article, published on 6 January, explores tensions in China’s ethnically-divided north-western region Xinjiang, but the Guardian has covered the subject before without any noticeable fallout.
On Monday, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal confirmed to Poynter that China unblocked Chinese-language versions of those two sites, which were first blocked in November.
A Guardian News & Media spokesperson said: “Obviously we are dismayed that theguardian.com has been blocked in China. The reason for this is currently unclear but we are investigating the extent of the block and hope that access to our website will return to normal in the very near future.”
Previously, China blocked The New York Times and Bloomberg News, but press cards were given in December to reporters from those organizations, as well as others, after fears that they wouldn’t be renewed.
Chinese journalists, meanwhile, have to take an ideology test, which you can take, too, at the end of this December story from The New York Times.
