A free press in China? Not yet.

The invisible hand of state-controlled censorship looms large in China's growing flirtation with Western concepts of intellectual expression and freedom.

A group of retired Communist Party officials, along with members of the tightly controlled state media, issued several public demands recently. The core of these call for China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, to dismantle censorship procedures “in favor of a system of legal responsibility” for items that are freely published.

Would you risk personal safety and professional status to stand up for a free press? Has censorship every affected your intellectual life? If so, how?

A fringe figure takes center stage

The New York Times "Room for Debate" column recently posed an interesting question: When does a fringe figure deserve the media spotlight?

The case in point is Gainesville, FL preacher Terry Jones who had planned to hold a ceremony involving the burning of Korans as a 09/11 protest.

Did the media take notice only because esteemed figures such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama, among others including Sarah Palin, made a point to condemn the planned event? If the media would have ignored the story, would the high level of anti-Islamic sentiment and outright religious persecution that Muslims in America face today been brought to light in such a way?

As the Times asks: How should the news media have responded to this event?