Most of the time, let's face it, journalists just do not get good press. The very word "reporter" is often used or interpreted as a smear. Newspaper readers and television viewers alike regularly complain to news organizations about their employees' bias, incompetence and bad grammar. And for all their rhetoric about press freedom, the powerful too often treat journalists as, at best, a kind of malodorous underclass -- vaguely necessary people whom they prefer to see as little of as possible. At worst, they treat them like criminals or subversives, as the world was reminded again last Tuesday when the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) handed out this year's International Press Freedom Awards in New York.

When U.S. President George W. Bush visited China this month, he and Chinese President Hu Jintao may have differed on trade, piracy and human rights, but they showed a unified front in their disdain for the press. Reporters were not allowed to ask questions at a joint news conference in Beijing, and when Mr. Bush did meet with a few of them later, he soon grew impatient and turned to leave. Unfortunately, the ornate double doors he tried to exit through were locked, eliciting this candid admission: "I was trying to escape."

Escape whom? Only a group of reporters trying to do their often tedious and thankless job of keeping tabs on a powerful political leader.