The official figures for the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 were released three years later. On November 22, 1979, after approval by the authorities, Xinhua reported the figures from a national seismology conference in Dalian: more than 242,000 dead and more than 164,000 seriously injured.
A Party website later gave the official figure as 242,769 dead.
The CCTV program Focus Report (焦点访谈) went on air on April 1, 1994. It exposed problems such as poisonous milk powder, a fake qigong master and officials who traveled abroad at public expense. On December 29, 1997, Premier Li Peng visited CCTV and wrote an inscription for the program: “Praise the advanced, criticize the backward, uphold justice.” (表扬先进，批评落后，伸张正义)
On October 7, 1998, Premier Zhu Rongji wrote: “Supervision by public opinion, voice of the masses, mirror for the government, vanguard of reform.”
In June 2026, a People’s Daily commentary, republished by Xinhua, described an attitude among officials: “do more, err more. Do less, err less. Do nothing, err not.” (多干多错、少干少错、不干不错)
This “wrong understanding,” the commentary said, makes Party members and officials “afraid of mistakes, afraid of accountability, afraid of carrying the pot.” They “would rather lie flat and avoid responsibility than take on hard tasks.”
The editorial office of Xinhua’s Reference News published 内部参考, Internal Reference. It carried reports written and translated especially for leaders, and it was meant only for senior cadres of the Party.
The historian Shen Zhihua describes their content: “The important domestic and international news they report is generally not printed in the public newspapers, not even in Reference News.”
In October 2025, a Xinhua commentary said that the new achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan period were “fundamentally due to the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core.”
A year-end economic review in December 2025 used the same phrase in its first sentence. “Under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core,” it said, all regions and departments had carried out the new development philosophy, and the economy had moved forward.
The Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975, and the press was censored. The first edition of the Indian Express after that carried no editorial. The space where it should have been was left white. One account dates the issue June 28, 1975.
The Financial Express printed a poem by Rabindranath Tagore: “Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high.” The journalist Kalpana Sharma said that leaving blank space was later judged a breach of the censorship guidelines.
R.K. Laxman drew the cartoon You Said It for The Times of India. Its best-known figure is the Common Man. “The Common Man generally acts as a silent witness to all the action in the comic,” Wikipedia notes.
The Central Hall of Parliament House in New Delhi was used formally once a year, for the President’s address. On other days it belonged to the members. “Lawmakers mainly unwind and interact with each other in the Central Hall,” the Asian Age wrote in 2020. Journalists wanted entry because the hall gave them close access to many lawmakers under one roof.
Open Magazine called it “the nation’s hall of gossip.” By an unwritten rule, private conversations held there were not made public.
In the night of January 28 to 29, 2025, a crowd crush took place at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj. According to Wikipedia, “Authorities initially denied that the crush or casualties had occurred before announcing on the evening of 29 January that at least 30 people had died.”
The official figure has been disputed. A Newslaundry report based on hospital and police records put the toll at no fewer than 79.
In 2008 and 2009 the Income Tax Department tapped the phone lines of Niira Radia, a corporate lobbyist, for 300 days. In November 2010 transcripts of some of her calls became public. They were conversations with politicians, industrialists and senior journalists.
According to Wikipedia, some of the calls show attempts to “use some media persons to influence the decision to appoint A. Raja as telecom minister.”