AND HERE IS THE NEWS: Many journalists do their best within difficult constraints
Two caricatures have defined the international view of Chinese journalists. The first is that of the Orwellian mouthpiece the unquestioning apparatchik feeding the cowed masses their daily dose of newspeak. The second is that of the dissident author, imprisoned, beaten and tortured for railing against corruption and human-rights abuses, or forced into lonely exile and doomed forevermore to wander the Western lecture circuit.
There is some truth in both images. But the 20 Beijing-based journalists interviewed by University of Iowa journalism professor Judy Polumbaum in China Ink fall somewhere...
