Meet the press.Forget the stereotypes.A new book offers a warm,frank amd realistic depiction of Chinese journalists

Two caricatures have defined the international view of China journalists.The first is that of the Orwllian mouth-piece-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 Bejiing-based journalists interviewed by University of Iwoa Journalism professor Judy Polumbaum in China ink fall somewhere in the middle.Caught between a free market that rewards investigative reporting with increased readership and a fearful government that does its best to discourage whistle-blowing,there astute professionals-most land their field as top editors,columnists or foreign correspondents-are forced to adopt new definaitions of success.The values that they strive to maintain-avoiding bias,exposing wrongdoing and captivanting an audience-will be recognized by journalists everywhere,however.Censorship is always,of course,the elephant in the back corner of the Chinese newsroom.Certain topics,like Taiwan,Tibet and the Falun Gong,go conspicuously unmentioned.But grand controversies are not the focus of the book.China Ink instead tells the story of the everyday fight to sidestep propaganda and produce a serviceable publication or program.A famous radio host tells of how she convinced a murderer who confessed on air to turn himself in.A magazine writer tells of the story she penned-and of how bad she smelled- after taking a three-day train journey to southern China