It was a rare display of unity among Chinese journalists. All are under the thumb of propaganda authorities, but some work for state-owned publications while others work for privately owned media outlets that are typically more daring.

One prominent weekly, the Beijing-based Economic Observer, ignored the directive, rolling out nine pages of coverage of the accident in its Saturday edition. The report described the Railway Ministry as a runaway operation; reconstructed the events in Wenzhou from the viewpoint of dozens of survivors; and examined the failure of the official, state-operated media to report the accident when it occurred.

One of the Economic Observer’s journalists said the pages were already printed when the orders came.

But many others paid heed: editors said the 21st Century Business Herald and China Business Journal each tore up eight pages of articles while The Beijing Times jettisoned four pages. One discarded article, based on the account of the wife of one victim, was titled: “There was no miracle for them.” The headline was a pointed reference to a case that has been relentlessly trumpeted by officials and the state-run press — the rescue of a toddler 21 hours after the crash, after rescuers had given up all hope and been told to quit.

“There were three calls,” one editor in Beijing said. “The first came around 9 p.m., ordering us to ‘cool down’ coverage of the Wenzhou accident as much as possible.” An hour later, the newspaper was instructed “to print only Xinhua’s wire and not to print anything we had gotten ourselves. No comments, no analysis,” the editor said, referring to the official news agency. A third call at midnight ordered the accident coverage off the front page.

The authorities even postponed the publication of an article prepared by Xinhua, according to one editor who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions. That report focused on the Railway Ministry’s failure to answer a series of questions about the crash.

On its Web site, the Hong Kong Journalists Association protested, noting that only Thursday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, speaking at a news conference in Wenzhou, had insisted that the “investigation into the accident should be open, transparent and monitored by the public.”