It's time for another edition of our ongoing coverage of media freedom in the Far East. Yah!

According to Asia Times, Hong Kong journalists working on the mainland, who had enjoyed unprecedented access as reporters in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games, must now be accredited by the mainland must be accredited to the All-China Journalists Association and get "the consent of the individual or organization to be interviewed."

The policy is "one step forward, two steps back" for media freedom in the Communist state, Woo Lai Wan, a representative of International Federation of Journalists, said. Wan, however, isn't to worried about the new regulations: "These rules were there before the Olympics and we ignored them. We will ignore them again."