It’s no surprise for government anywhere in the world not to enjoy the watchdog role of the press, but those as daring as the one in Dongguan of South China’s Guang Dong province are few and far between.

The city’s Party publicity department, the overseas of the local media, announced recently that it would issue a special journalist certificate in order to facilitate the work of the reporters.

The move, which some think is aiming to block the journalists deemed unfriendly by the local gov’t, a gross violation of journalists’ rights to do their work.

That must be highly unexpected by the Dongguan officials responsible for the publicity work. Dongguan is by no means innovative in this regard. Just six months ago, Yunnan Provincial Higher People’s Court assigned passes to a selected group of 14 journalists for special access to its court system.

That also triggered(触动，引发) strong protests from the press, because by granting such a privilege to a selected group, the Yuannan Higher Court has actually denied the majority of the journalists’ rights stipulated by the law.

Both actions had challenged the authority (权威) of the General Administration of Press and Publication，the sole gov’t institution in the country to issue a press card. The untold message of Yunan and Dongguan is equally clear. If you are not cooperative, you might never get such a pass.

In the past few years, the growing role of watchdog played by the news media, esp the new organizations from other cities and provinces has already become a big headache for many local officials.

It’s not difficult to tell how upset some officials are when their policies and practices are criticized by the news media. The images of their cities that they try to build for years have been tarnished(失去光泽), casting a possible shadow on their career in climbing the official hierarchy.

The latest examples would be about how law enforcement officials in Shanghai used questionable entrapment on illegally operated taxis, how a gov’t dept in Xi’an, Shanxi province, vowed to ban an estimated 30,000 garbage collectors from picking recyclable in trashbins. And how tourism officials in Yangshuo, Guangxi, pretended unaware of the precarious balloon services, which killed a number of Dutch tourists recently.

Ironically, criticism and debate of such policies and practices are often much more heated in the media outside Shanghai, Xi’an and Yanghsuo, as local news media are becoming more mindful about confronting local gov’t.

While many officials still like to offer various edicts to the local news organizations, they are troubled by the face that criticism from outside their jurisdiction is out of control. Therefore, the idea of producing a special press pass should come as no surprise. (…come up with more soon)