Obama interviewer 'demoted'

Zehao Zhou, assistant professor of information services in Schmidt Library, was quoted in this story by Radio Free Asia:

Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have demoted the editor-in-chief of a cutting-edge newspaper, shortly after he interviewed visiting U.S. President Barack Obama. 

Xiang Xi, who was shown in photographs of the interview seated in an armchair opposite Obama in the Nov. 19 edition of the newspaper, was renamed "executive" editor-in-chief of Southern Weekend last week, with another editor brought in to fill his former slot. 

Zehao Zhou, professor of information science at Pennsylvania's York College, said Obama's choice of Southern Weekend appeared to have been made because of the paper's reputation for hard-hitting journalism, compared with the more tightly controlled Communist Party mouthpieces in Beijing. 

"Perhaps [Obama's aides] wanted to use this channel to . . . give him the chance to say a few things that he wouldn't be able to say in other situations," Zhou said, adding that the move might have been aimed at reaching out to opponents of the government, or democracy activists. 

"One of the problems of the interview format is that once you have started, it's hard to wrap things up," he said. 

"They're not going to shut the U.S. president up, now, are they?"