Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

The New Travel Weekly magazine has outraged Chinese by publishing so called “sexy disaster photos.” The magazine has been shut down by government officials in Chongqing until the situation is rectified, calling the photos an “extremely evil social influence.” You can find News thread containing the photos; the magazine’s Editor-in-chief, Editor, and Deputy Editor have all been fired. The photos came at the beginning of the first Chinese national period of mourning since Chairman Mao Zedong died in 1976, and after more than 65,000 (to date) have been officially reported dead after a deadly earthquake struck Sichuan.

As pictured above, the photos feature models made up with stylized blood, titled with the Chinese characters for disaster (灾难), and surrounded by rubble. Certainly, the are in poor taste, and offer nothing substantial to the ongoing crisis. One of the magazine employees, surnamed Cai, said to reporters: “If the outcome of the rectification is satisfactory, it is possible to reopen the magazine. After all, only part of the staff made the decision to print that shoot. It wouldn’t be fair to just close it for good.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is tagged with chairman mao zedong, mao zedong, disaster photos, deadly earthquake, feature models, national period, deputy editor, social influence, poor taste, chief editor, chongqing, new travel, sichuan, chinese characters, rectification, rubble, government officials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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