media - More protests or just better media coverage?

The question has come up more than once in the slipstream of the surge of media reports on labor unrest in Guangdong. Is there really more unrest or is the coverage getting better? And then: is the government leaving more room for reporting or are the new media taking that room, forcing traditional media to follow?
The China Digital News quotes Lin Shusen, the Guangdong party secretary who blames reporters for overdoing it. "It's normal for people to go to the government to complain. That is a reflection of democracy. Hong Kong people are very fond of marches but we don't want to be like Hong Kong." (The original link is missing.)
Sacked editor Wang Guangze of the 21th Century Herald feels that repression has only become more subtle, he told the South China Morning Post. "Wang is convinced that his dismissal is related to his speech at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut, this month," it says in a transcript at the China Study Group.
"I notified them about my trip there and they were talking about my promotion before I left for the US. It is impossible that they did not fire me because of the presentation," he said.
In his speech, Wang argued that despite tight controls by the authorities, the internet was reshaping the mainland's political landscape and civil society.