It’s bad news for a mainland newspaper to let something slip about the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Really bad news. The news only tends to get worse when the slip-up occurs at a time as delicate as now, with the Olympics days away and Beijing on tenterhooks about, among lots of other things, foreign TV broadcasts and tourists at Tiananmen Square. But one week after its well-publicized infraction, the propaganda-meisters remain eerily silent in the case of The Beijing News. Persons informed on the matter say it may very well stay that way until after the Games.

Last Thursday the paper, one of the country’s elite commercial dailies, ran an interview with Pulitzer Prize-decorated photographer Liu Heung Shing. Liu is the editor of a new coffee-table volume of photos that spans the tumultuous history of the People’s Republic (Newsweek’s Alexandra Seno profiled him last week). Much of the subject matter is politically tinged, including images of the Tiananmen demonstrations, the Cultural Revolution and previously unreleased shots by Chinese photojournalists. As a result the book is unlikely to be sold on the mainland, and some copies shipped in have been impounded by customs officials.

To accompany the interview in The Beijing News, Liu says, he e-emailed the paper three photos of his in the book, though he was cautious not to select any that would be too risky to publish. When the interview appeared, however, the spread of images featured a fourth he never sent, at the bottom corner of the page:

The Beijing News, July 24, 2008, Page C15

The corner photo, entitled “The Wounded”, was one Liu captured during the June 3-4, 1989 crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen. Its shows civilians pierced by bullets being wheeled away on tricycle carts.

Fourth Photo: 'The Wounded'

At The Beijing News, alarm bells sounded first thing that morning. A pair of ranking editors at the paper got a call about the faux pas from a junior colleague, according to another Beijing-based journalist who spoke with them about it that day. Soon cadres from the paper’s co-parent and official sponsor organization, the Communist Party-published Guangming Daily, were ringing them about it as well. The paper made a last-ditch effort to withhold some copies of Thursday’s edition. But the bulk were already in the hands of newsstands and subscribers. It was too late to launch a systematic recall without causing a major stir, say this source and two other veteran journalists with close connections to the paper. The editors did manage to quietly disable the Web link to the story. But the next step was unavoidable: They would have file a report on the incident to Guangming, which would pass it up to the Party’s Central Publicity Department—the dreaded propaganda bureau.

The editors wrapped up their initial investigation into the matter swiftly. It did not take long for them to conclude that this was an unintended gaffe. There had been a missing hole in the layout. A fourth image was needed to fill it. So, the journalist sources were informed, a young layout editor simply scanned the Internet, lifted another image from Liu's book, and slotted it in—neglecting to consider what it was. The downloaded image had to be stretched to line it up with the others, says one of the journalists. Compared with print output of the three shots that he provided, Liu says, “You could notice the difference in the qualities.”

In the minds of the journalist sources, each of whom was independently briefed, there was scant doubt that the blunder was accidental as the paper claimed. Nearly two decades of enforced silence removed from “June 4th”, they explain, even many young people in Beijing have seen and heard next to nothing of the tragedy. The page editor responsible for the story about Liu is about 30 years old, which means he would have been just eleven in 1989, according to one of the journalists. “I myself was old enough to fully experience Tiananmen, but I didn’t notice [the photo] when I first saw it, either,” he says (incidentally, the same could be said for this writer and his family). At the nearby headquarters of Guangming, where the Party newsmen know far more than they are free to publish, most did not hear about the incident all day Thursday, let alone spot the offending photograph.

Propaganda officials appeared to have realized too that the pic, on Page 15 of the Culture section, was not easily identifiable. By Thursday's end, even after filing their mea culpa, The Beijing News editors hadn’t heard a word back from the Central Publicity Department, says the journalist who was in touch with them. The protracted silence was abnormal. They began to sense that with the Olympics just around the corner, perhaps the propaganda bosses might just let the matter be - for the time being, that is. As one of the journalists, informed about with the inner workings of the department, observed on Friday morning: “Right now they just want to stop this from spreading.”

Still, it was a very anxious weekend for the editors, says the journalist who spoke with them. By Friday morning, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao had come out with a report about the foul-up (translated excerpt here from ESWN). According its story, “authorities” ordered all copies of Thursday’s edition recalled from newsstands on learning of it, and a number of editors and reporters at the paper were expected to be disciplined over it. The portrayal of the recall was clearly overstated and that of disciplinary action seemed at very least premature. But it sent The Beijing News editors' stress levels skyward.

Over the weekend they went about firming up their internal investigation. An oblivious young editor’s error did not explain, for example, how the lapse bypassed vetting by the paper’s own chain of command. Less-than-intended Tiananmen references are known to elude the self-censorship process mainland media are obliged to perform. Last June, the Chengdu Evening News inadvertently printed a classified ad from an anonymous buyer that paid tribute to mothers of protesters killed in the crackdown. Three editors were fired as a result, according to reports. That was a mere classified ad in a provincial tabloid. This was The Beijing News.

The paper's top editors were themselves puzzled that their charges had not caught the photo, says one journalist. The page editor Chen Yuan, while young, is the author of well-received histories on the modern Chinese intellectual scene. And the senior editor who ultimately signed off on it was a ranking photojournalist at the paper.

To complicate matters, a few conspiracy theorists cropped up in the blogosphere. They submitted that someone at The Beijing News might have slipped in the image deliberately, in an act somehow motivated by the internal frictions at the paper.

There was no motive or any other evidence to support suspicions of an inside job, the editors concluded. Nonetheless, the paper’s controversial upbringing was relevant to their case.

It’s the product of a pioneering joint venture between an odd couple of partners: stodgy, cash-poor Guangming, which hasn't been considered on the vanguard of reformism since the Deng days; and the Guangzhou-based Southern Media Group, one of the country’s most enterprising and aggressive today. Savvy news and ad pros bred by Southern Metropolis, a cousin paper, have mostly run the show day to day from the start. But Guangming’s the official guardian and wields editorial and administrative veto power.

At the end of 2005, pressured by Party higher-ups over a mounting number of offending investigations and editorials, Guangming’s newly installed Party boss dismissed the top Nanfang editor Yang Bin. This prompted hundreds of infuriated staff to stage an impromptu walkout (most went out on binge of drinking and karaoke). A few of Yang’s lieutenant editors would have been sacked as well, if not for the backlash and talk of an all-out strike. Within weeks Guangming had appointed several of its own men to senior editorial posts, essentially to act as minders. Yang's lieutenants and many other original editors and senior staff ended up resigning. The paper shrank in pages, distribution and advertising suffered, and the renowned editorial and investigative pages slipped into a virtual coma for months. Over the past two years the editorials and daily news coverage have gradually rebounded, but the investigative reports seldom hit as hard as they once had.

Every Monday afternoon, the paper’s senior editors assemble for a weekly editorial meeting. This Monday, hours before the meeting, they got word that Guangming would be dispatching a special representative to brief them. “They thought the whip was coming,” says the journalist. But instead, the rep spent the time transmitting the “spirit” of recent Party pronouncements to study. Of the Tiananmen photo, not a word was uttered.

The paper's official account of the incident has now been circulated to both Party and governmental media authorities, say the journalists. Several editors have already offered their resignations over the snafu, they say. But as of mid-week, the topmost editors was telling them to wait for authorities to weigh in.

Almost certainly, a personnel shakedown is in store for the paper. But journalists with knowledge of the case now think it highly possible that authorities will wait until after the Olympics to take action. It's also possible, though far from certain, that the delay will translate into a lighter punishment from propaganda czars than would have been doled out otherwise, they say. "But they would be stupid to do it now," says one of the journalists.

“They wouldn’t want to give all the foreign journalists in Beijing reason to hype this thing,” another explains. “Especially after what happened there the last time they sacked people.”