By DAMON YI AND AMY QIN AUGUST 25, 2014 6:00 PMAugust 26, 2014 9:27 am
The following was translated and adapted by Amy Qin from an article by Damon Yi published in cn.nytimes.com, the Chinese-language website of The New York Times:
Lin Zhibo, who first came to widespread public attention when he angered many Chinese with his remarks dismissing the scale of the Great Famine of 1958-61, has once again found himself at the center of a heated debate.
This time, the issue is the role of the Communist Party in journalism schools. The uproar was caused by the announcement last month that Mr. Lin, an editor at People’s Daily, the party mouthpiece, based in the northernwestern province of Gansu, had been appointed dean of the journalism school at Lanzhou University.
Mr. Lin’s appointment has thrown the spotlight on recent efforts by local offices of the Communist Party Propaganda Department to use personnel appointments as a way to forge partnerships with journalism schools and to assert greater ideological control over the training of future opinion shapers.