Word: polumbaum
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...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 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, these astute professionals - most lead their field as top editors, columnists or foreign correspondents - are forced to adopt new definitions of success. The values that they strive to maintain - avoiding bias, exposing wrongdoing and captivating an audience - will be recognized by journalists everywhere, however...
...While many of Polumbaum's interviewees have worked or traveled abroad and have thus been able to compare different media sectors for themselves, there is no presumption that Chinese journalists have it worse. Censorship is everywhere, many say, pointing out that the activities of U.S. media in Iraq can be tightly restricted by the military. Others, writing for privately owned newspapers and magazines, say that prioritizing profit is just as destructive to journalism as a censor's pen - something that journalists complain about all the time, wherever they are. Tabloid journalists will be especially familiar with the pressure to inflate...
...Innumerable pundits have vied to pronounce upon the social and cultural development of the Chinese, but Polumbaum's approach - letting her subjects speak for themselves - appears to be the one now needed most. After putting her interviewees into context with a concise introduction, she simply lets each one recount their own story in a dedicated chapter, resisting the temptation to analyze and conclude, and eschewing clichés such as the prediction that the free market will break down censorship entirely. What results is an unadorned snapshot of a moment in Chinese media, both intimate and unusual...
Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities last year, TV Scriptwriter Theodore S. Polumbaum of the United Press took refuge in the Fifth Amendment: he refused to say whether he was or ever had been a Communist. Next day U.P. fired him. Polumbaum, it said, had "intentionally created a doubt as to his honesty . . . and [his] conduct . . . was incompatible with the best interests of journalism...
...American Newspaper Guild protested the discharge, contending that Polumbaum should be judged on whether his copy had shown bias, not on his nonjournalistic activities. But it agreed to let an arbitrator, appointed by the American Arbitration Association, decide. Last week, after deliberating for two months, Arbitrator George Spiegelberg, a Manhattan trial lawyer, upheld the discharge, though he thought that U.P.'s specific reasons for the firing had not been proved. Nevertheless, Spiegelberg held that "The fact that the customers of U.P. would or might believe that U.P. retained a biased reporter . . . gave U.P. just and sufficient cause for discharging...