Speaker’s Statement: In September of 2010 I attended a seminar at the East West Center in Honolulu that brought together seven senior journalists from China and seven from America. The two groups had just spent three weeks in each other’s countries, ostensibly examining journalistic coverage of the changing economic forces in the two nations. Inevitably, though, the conversation during the Honolulu “debriefing” turned to the fundamental differences between the Chinese and American views of the purposes of journalism.

At the Honolulu meeting there were a few moments of mutual discovery that, I believe, illuminate the contrasting world-views typical of the two very different sets of practicing professionals. This presentation will summarize those moments of discovery and describe a selected historical context that seems to offer a degree of explanatory power that may assist us in moving beyond commentaries that focus entirely on suppression and abuse.