Stories this morning from the Chinese Foreign Correspondents Club (www.fccchina.org) and Reporters Without Borders (www.rsf.org) highlight that awarding China the host of the 2008 Olympic Games has not resulted in the media freedom that had been hoped for. Many journalists have been turned away at checkpoints while trying to gain access to the region in order to verify some of the annecdotal reports that are managing to get out about the current crackdown on Tibetan protestors within Lhasa and other regions of Tibet.

Without independent international media inside Tibet, there is no transparency regarding the Chinese military response to the situation, and no balancing perspective to the unsubstantiated statements being made by the Chinese leadership or the propoganda being broadcast around the world by the predictable state-run news agency, Xinhau.

China enacted new laws to allow for increased media freedom leading up to the Aug 08 games, however it appears that these are being ignored. In any event, if the Olympics were to bring about lasting changes within China, why are these new media freedoms set to expire at the conclusion of the paralympic games?