In the letters section of this week's Southern Weekly, a reader expresses displeasure at the paper's practice of printing taboo words in full rather than replacing them with substitute characters or avoiding them altogether. (You may want to reference this post for background on the proper usage and interpretation of Beijing slang.)

The letter was drawn from the SW online forums. Netizen Ye Feng writes:

In the 9 August issue of Southern Weekly there was an article on "Chinese-style English." The end of the piece was marred by the word 牛逼 [lit. "cow vagina", meaning "cool" or "stubborn"]. It was no isolated incident. On 20 September, Lu Minghe's report on the Mazda 6 incident had the word 歪日滴 ["fuck" as an expression of surprise]. Shortly after, in the 27 September arts section, Yuan Lei quoted a line from an SMS sent by director Jiang Wen: 不要吹牛逼 ["don't boast"]. That article also had 丢你老母嘿 [Cantonese, "fuck your mother"] and even the standard "national curse" 操你妈 ["fuck your mother"].

I feel that the language used in Southern Weekly is getting more and more vulgar and frivolous. People might have very direct personalities, but some of the things that they say should not be recorded verbatim. Gutter-talk like 牛逼 and 操你妈, regardless of whether or not the characters are correct, should not be written if at all possible. If avoidance is impossible, then a compromise could be made: replace them with 牛× and ×你妈. This technique is used by some people, and it doesn't influence the readers' ability to understand.

"Regardless of whether or not the characters are correct" refers to the fact that in the examples brought up by Ye Feng, the offending characters 逼 and 操 are themselve substitutes, for 屄 and 肏 respectively.

The editor replies:

"Popular but refined" has always been our goal in running this newspaper. However, when certain articles and certain words are vulgar to such a degree that it causes people to break out into a sweat, we should be vigilant and self-disciplined. Another netizen, Pre-Qin Hermit, believes that the line "Screw the Discipline Commission!" [中纪委算个球!, lit. "worth a ball," see this], uttered by one of Pang Jiayu's subordinates, was the highlight of the 20 September front-page article, "First account of a ten year grudge: 'Deep Throat' emerges in the Pang Jiayu case." How to express language in its original form is something that we will have to consider further, and we also await further suggestions from our readers.

Pre-Qin Hermit's full comment suggests that newspapers have the duty to provide an unaltered transcript as part of their commitment to reporting the facts:

I don't agree with Ye Feng's viewpoint. If it were television, we'd say that the bloody scenes of terrorism ought to be blurred a bit, but there at least that's part of the process to get it out, to show the facts of the news as accurately as possible. Newspapers today, as part of the print media, have to edit or omit "fuck your mother" in the name of avoiding frivolous language. Heh, in the 60s or 70s this would have been called the pedantry of the stinking ninth class.

News is supposed be as true to fact as possible. Whether the interviewee says "fuck your mother" or "Damn it," they should be reported straight. This lets gives the readers a complete understanding of the focus of the news.

I remember one issue, the one with the report on the emergence of Deep Throat, in which an official said something to the person in question, a line that you could say is the highlight of the whole report. That line was "Screw the Discipline Commission!"

Right there you can get the sense of how much was contained in that news item!

In your suggestion, this line should be changed to "#￥% the Discipline Commission!" Compare the two; I have just one question: is it still news?

So in sum, my personal opinion is that the idea that "the truthfulness of news is not manifested in quoting someone's dirty language" is a statement rife with problems!

For a look at the different ways western media handles this problem, see Language Log.