Perhaps. The bigger 'threat' is not so much from foreign media per se, but from internal Chinese (activists) who would translate and disseminate this information via various channels. It's not as though most Chinese know how/bother to avoid the GFC or know how to read English. It's the internal 'conspiracy theorists' and anti-propagandists who the gov't fear the most which is why they have introduced laws governing internet cafes, ISPs, blogs, microblogs, and hire thousands to scrub sites of offending info, etc.

The gov't mostly want to control internal communication. I think in this case they were looking for info on where the NYT got this information, so they could track down and rectify the sourc(e)s.