INTERNATIONAL: "China's Answer to a Crime Includes Amateur Sleuths," by Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, 25 February 2009.

Prisoners awaiting trial in a county jail allegedly play a dry version of Marco Polo and the searcher, blindfolded, stumbles and hits his head on the floor, triggering a fatal wound. So sayeth the police. Public reaction surmised otherwise, as thousands of netizens start positing the prisoner died from interrogation, something that apparently happens a lot in the Chinese police station. Provincial officials try to tamp down on the anger by inviting the public to solve the case. One thousand (!) volunteers are pared down to a citizens committee of 15, who visit the scene, check evidence, etc. No, no great answers found, but the case riveted the public, notes the article, and "fueled a frank discussion online and in the state-run media about the extent--and the limits--of official attempts to shape popular opinion." The provincial official's motive? To restore public faith:

Past experience has shown that the doubts of the netizens will not shift or recede on their own over time. Instead, the doubts will actually rise.

The key phrase there is "on their own." The attempt backfires because--surprise!--it turns out that all 15 committee members were employees of the state-run media, and the leader is one of those "fifty-cent party members" who gets paid to write pro-gov postings on the web (at 50 cents a pop). So the postings by angry citizens continue to pile up by the tens of thousands.