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From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Ladstone is away this week.

I'm Bob Garfield.

A sudden flourishing of investigative journalism in China has created a sort of wild west atmosphere, crusading reporters and editors armed with lurid accounts of corruption and official malfeasance, blazing

away at the powers that be. But this wild west is taking place in the authoritarian east,

where communist party officials have made examples of newspapers

and websites deemed too quick on the draw. Such repression points up the difficulty and sometimes

absurdity of establishing a free press in a fascistic society, and that inherent conflict is also

apparent in the teaching of journalism in China.

Shigwang Li is Executive Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at Beijing's

Xinghua University. He joins us now. Professor Lee, welcome to On the Media.

Thank you. Periodically, in China, papers or websites are closed down.

Journalists are fired or jailed for doing their jobs.

How does one teach journalism in that kind of environment?

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