Journalists Say China Is Not Living Up To Openness Pledge – washingtonpost.com

Behind the scenes, their bosses on the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games are busy preparing daily news conferences and field trips to showcase all that China has to offer. There are lectures on how to protect the giant panda, briefings on the safety of Olympic Village food and opportunities to witness the gleaming urban development of Beijing.

But much to the dismay of organizers, the thousands of credentialed journalists who have begun pouring into the capital are not impressed.

Instead of writing about pandas or Olympic food, Western journalists are mostly covering stories that the Chinese government would rather they not — the city’s chronic pollution, for instance — and complaining about a lack of access to Internet sites and the famed Tiananmen Square.

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