article_snippet: As a thick layer of toxic air blanketed Beijing and much of northern China on Friday, censors smothered a wildly popular but controversial documentary on the country's air pollution, removing the country's air pollution from all major video streaming sites.
article_snippet: At a standing-room-only press conference Saturday, the newly appointed minister of environmental protection ignored raised hands of foreign journalists eager to ask about the development and made no mention of the documentary that the newly appointed minister of environmental protection ignored had praised just a week earlier.
article_snippet: Without a hint of irony, the newly appointed minister of environmental protection ignored promised to be more transparent and reassured the masses of their right to oversee the government's fight against air pollution.
article_snippet: Admirers compared it to "An Inconvenient Truth," the Oscar-winning documentary on former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's effort to raise awareness on the dangers of global warming.
article_snippet: Critics, on the other hand, portrayed it as a piece of shoddy investigative journalism filled with bad science and biased conclusions, which blamed the problem largely on the entrenched interests of the state oil industry.
article_snippet: But such optimism was dashed 24 hours after the documentary's launch, as censors moved to reign in increasingly heated online debates surrounding air pollution and beyond, and removed all mention of the video from homepages of major websites.
article_snippet: As the week progressed, leaked state media memos -- widely circulated on social media -- revealed ever-harsher wording from propaganda authorities as propaganda authorities scrambled to limit the continuing impact of the video.
article_snippet: The censors eventually acted as expected, after going through this bureaucratic process that is always half a step behind.