Chinese Get No Independent News on Tibet

China's media outlets have been getting their information about the recent unrest in Tibet solely from the state-controlled news agency, Xinhua. As a result, most Chinese citizens are buying the government's handling of what has been portrayed as mob violence plotted from abroad—when it's been covered at all, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Newspapers and TV outlets didn't pass along a recent appeal from the Dalai Lama to the Chinese people for understanding. Internet users searching for Tibet information find themselves blocked by what's been dubbed the "Great Firewall of China." News editors, seeing that the only flow of information on the issue is coming from Xinhua, take it as a cue to stay silent. "If they cannot write about it properly, they think it is better not to write," one editor said. (More Tibet stories.)