A Chinese scholar has released a book about Chinese language media's coverage of the Rape of Nanking in 1937, in which he revealed the news blackout imposed by Japan at the time and Chinese media's, especially the Central News Agency's, efforts to overcome reporting difficulties. The China News Service quoted Professor Jing Shenghong of Nanjing Normal University as saying at a news conference on Sunday that it was extremely difficult for the media to report about the massacre as the Japanese army had prior to the systemic killings put in place a well-planned news blackout. The professor at the university's College of Social Development News Service made the remarks while launching his book 'Chinese News Media and the Rape of Nanking during World War II' in Nanjing, China Sunday. Nanking is now spelled as Nanjing. From September through December of 1937, Jing noted, Japan had demanded all foreign diplomats, journalists and expatriates leave Nanking for Wuhan, Shanghai and Hong Kong. On Dec. 13, when the Japanese troops broke through the city's defense and entered the capital, it immediately cut off the city's communications with the outside world and banned any entry into and exit from the city for more than a month. It was during that time that Japanese troops carried out the atrocity, butchering hundreds of thousands of unarmed Chinese in Nanking, an incident historians have since called the Rape of Nanking because many women were gang raped before being massacred. Jing pointed out that in 1938, all Western and Chinese media were prohibited from visiting Nanking while those remaining in the city were all purged, 'so that for a long period of time not one single newspaper was able to publish normally, not one single Chinese news worker could work normally, and not one single Chinese media outside the city could acquire any news regarding Nanjing.' Foreign missionaries are believed to have been the first to reveal news about Japan's takeover of Nanking and the subsequent massacre in the city. The missionaries had remained in the city at the time. After they told the outside world what was happening, foreign media reported about it. A few days later, on Dec. 22, 1937, the Central News Agency (selfnews), the biggest news wire service of the Republic of China, became the first Chinese language media to report about it, Jing said. He praised the selfnews for surmounting difficulties to report about the incident. After the selfnews broke the news, other Chinese media quickly caught up by quoting those fleeing the city to tell their horrible stories inside the city. 'The ensuing Chinese media reports about the Rape of Nanking were both emotional and numerous -- far outnumbering those by the Western media,' Jing said. Jing said the subject of the media's coverage of one of the bloodiest incidents in China's history was worth in-depth research, according to the China News Service. He said a look into how the media worked at that time could bridge a gap in the study of the Rape of Nanking and is thus significant academically. It is not immediately clear, however, whether Jing was able to learn or reveal in his book what other obstacles Chinese language media faced which kept them from immediately reporting about the invasion of Nanking and the subsequent massacre after foreign media had reported about it. enditem/cs nnnn 