Still gotta marvel at the Party's ability to bend but not break. In the immediate aftermath of the quake, many domestic media documented the post-apocalyptic squalor at the scene. But few reported anything directly damning of officialdom. China Newsweek (no relation to Newsweek) investigated purported forewarnings of disaster, including a mass migration of toads and claims of suppressed reports by seismologists predicting a major quake. The story cited officials who denied ever being formally warned; even if they were warned, it noted, earthquakes in general cannot be pinpointed.

Some of the most incisive press comments came in the form of “told-you-so” editorials. In the most liberal print outlets, like the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis and its one-time cousin paper The Beijing News, columnists lavished cajoling praise upon the central government for its transparency -- their implicit wish being that Beijing make this case a real precedent, and live up to recent reforms and legislation regarding the official release of information.

Embattled newsman Chang Ping, widely criticized and ultimately demoted in the wake of the Tibet crisis, was once again pressing his case for the "universal value" of freedom of information, independent of national (or "nationalist") interests. But even then, the conventional wisdom amongst journalists was that the initial chorus of voices was just a passing phase of the story, its rite of spring. As the Party editor noted three days after: “When they [propaganda authorities] can get control, you can be sure that they will.”

By the end of the first week, to some extent, they already had. Sichuan designated certain disaster sites off-limits and regulated access to the disaster zone as a whole, by means of an official (albeit easily obtainable) permit. The CPD gave up on blanket orders in favor of stressing that coverage should be positive, unifying, and conducive to upholding stability. Reporters in the field were firmly ordered to disregard rumor and "false information" and to stick by official and military rescue parties - providing rare insights - though they many opted to go it alone.

A few outlets were also reprimanded for going too far. After officials reported on a dam that showed serious cracks, journalists began investigating whether it might rupture. On May 15, the 21st Century Business Herald ran a spot feature stressing the precariousness of the situation in the lead. It was promptly branded you hai xinxi, "harmful information”, according to the Shanghai-based editor. A few days later, on May 19, the paper followed up with a front-page investigation.

Then there was this little ethical infraction, as reported by Beijing-based uber-blog Danwei: "New Travel Weekly (旅游新报), a Chongqing-based newspaper was suspended from publishing because it used bikini-clad women on the front page of its May 19 issue, which was allegedly dedicated to earthquake relief efforts. The newspaper was accused of 'violating journalistic ethics' in its earthquake reporting."

Fairly edgy stuff has flowed day in and day out, nonetheless, from the Web platform of Caijing magazine, one of China’s most celebrated sources of investigative journalism. (Its irrepressible founding editor, Hu Shuli, in her latest editorial, urges Beijing to institute a system to better ready it for future catastrophes). Regulations forbid Web sites in China from doing original reporting, but Caijing is among a number of Chinese-language financial sites that skirt those rules, including the local embodiments of major foreign news brands.

Reuters, for instance, was quick to report the now-notorious case of the lower-class primary school that toppled like a house of cards in Wuhu, killing 200 to 300 young pupils, while other structures all around were barely affected. Parents and kids who survived the collapse charged that teachers had locked a couple classes of kids in a classroom over the lunch break, and then gone out to play mahjong. Reuters' Chinese site posted the piece in translation, and it got wide play in the mainland blogosphere. (The original page on the site was later scrambled within China, or so it would currently appear.)

China’s best-reputed newspaper, the Guangzhou-based weekly Southern Weekend, took few chances in its package of stories the week of the quake. One story probed a dilemma many people faced - that of where donations could be best put to use. The piece portrayed the government charities as the most reliable and largely glossed over questions of past corruption scandals, institutional inefficiency and hefty deductions for operational costs.

But by Week Two, Southern Weekend dug into the imbroglio over "crumbled tofu" construction in a Page One probe, translated in part by China Digital Times: "One member of the rescue team explodes with anger: 'It’s this tofu dregs construction! Inside the concrete, there’s only wire, not a single bit of reinforcing bar.'"

The paper right back at it last week, reconstructing the story of another school that was squished, translated by ESWN: "We wanted to try to determine if the deaths of the 127 students were due to a natural disaster or a manmade one."

The Beijing News bit to the rotten core of the issue a few days ago in an analysis by Peking University professor Zhang Qianfan. The China Media Project's Bandurski translates: "…how can we ensure that schools in other areas do not collapse? Essentially, this needs to happen through local democratic mechanisms making local officials answer truly to the local people." More specifically, ordinary people must either directly or indirectly participate in the government budgeting process so that expenditures become truly 'public expenditures' rather than budgets made at the discretion of the local governments themselves."

Call that "playing down"? These and other articles emerged despite a lot of finger-wagging from Chinese media czars urging otherwise.

Yet Beijing was smart to at least own up to the staggering number of school collapses early on. This makes it more likely that the brunt of the blame will fall on local officials, should the government be forced to respond further. In coming weeks, it's safe to expect that either a head or two will roll or the speech police will get much tougher on media critics - probably both. One way or another, notes the editor in Shanghai, “They’re going to have to ‘placate the people’s anger’,” an old turn-of-phrase connoting political damage control.

It would be difficult for media anywhere to ask unvarnished questions at such a tragic time, of course. In China, that's especially so. To a remarkable extent, the quake ordeal has demonstrated, the Party still guides the mass process of coping in times of crisis, and sets the standards of public decorum and political correctness. And helping enforce the Party's tone and tempo are the Internet “lynch mobs”, the easily inflamed anti-imperialist Red Guards of the Chinese digital age, who have gone on the attack against a couple of Chinese bloggers for mounting unappetizing critiques of the government, resulting in said bloggers' detention by police - precisely the kind of twists that free speech defenders like Chang Ping rail against.

A mob of viral messengers is also behind "Donations-Gate", as ESWN explains, wherein Western companies stand accused of being too slow to ante up, or too cheap.

Would-be muckrakers face more practical impediments. Knock-on emergencies like the "quake lake" have kept traditional media preoccupied, while aftershocks have made it that much harder for journalists to do cutting-edge reporting. By Week Two, the Shanghai-based editor said at the time, a lot of his friends in the field were physically and emotionally beat. “A lot of media are really, really exhausted right now,” he sighed. One Southern Metropolis reporter was narrowly saved after being washed away by a landslide, punctuating the extent of dangers in the field.

Meanwhile, telecommunications failures around the epicenter have limited the impact Indie bloggers might have had on quake reporting otherwise. Instead, the single-most publicized post to this point, it would appear, was the blow-by-blow eyewitness account of Premier Wen Jiabao's efforts the night of the quake, filed by a journalist in his traveling press corps (viz. our earlier blogs on that). The leaked IM transcript so lionized the Premier that state papers and radio broadcasts used sound bites. It turned out to be better P.R. than a Party puff piece could ever be. Far better.

The din of criticism is unlikely to die down, though, even as the censors try to move the story along. You get nowhere searching “earthquake+school buildings+collapse”, which has been blocked and branded "may be" illicit for more than two weeks now. It's the same treatment "Carrefour" got in April after Chinese protested the hypermarket over reported pro-Tibet ties. But key in something slightly different, “earthquake+collapse+schools”, and thousands of Chinese links pop up. "School buildings" or "rooms" (xiaoshe 校舍) is the term officials have used, which would seem to explain why it’s the term Web authorities have banned. The big sites typically comply to the letter of the block orders they get, but don't go any further than asked. Sometimes they even neglect to go that far. On Google's main indigenous rival Baidu, for whatever reason, the "school buildings" search went through fine at last check.