I've heard many media mogul wannabes proclaim their lofty goals. They've usually set their eyes on the Chinese equivalents of The New York Times, The Financial Times or Time magazine. But given the choice, I'd say they'll end up going for something like The National Enquirer or The Star.

A quick browse of Wednesday's homepage for a very popular news site yields these headlines: Mother and daughter tend one husband on same bed; coed students play sex games; sex maniac targets women's buttocks with knife; online dating pair turns out to be mother and son; police chief sets prostitution trap for impotent elderly.

These are just a few samples of social news. In the international category, it offers "half-naked Russian beauties," with photos. The top cultural news is an article on "the evolution of laws on pornography." In sports news, a streaking incident somewhere in the world gets extensive coverage, as usual.

To be fair, the website is only an aggregator of news articles from around the country. And it offers not-so-raunchy news as well.

Even the prim CCTV has jumped on the bandwagon as it aired a long segment on a group of women having dinner on top of a naked male body. For those with a longer-than-one-week news memory, the story had actually happened one year earlier and was already covered by the print and online media.

About two years ago, there was a flurry of reports on the Japanese custom "nyotaimori" - using a naked female body as a dinner table. A few Chinese restaurateurs were so inspired that they promptly copied the business model - and not surprisingly, were shut down by the authorities just as promptly.

Many criticized the practice as "demeaning to women." As an act of defiance, six female editors for a Chongqing-based women's magazine turned the table around and staged a "nantaimori" - for example, hiring a male model as their "body sushi plate." It was interpreted as a feminist experiment, a marketing ploy, or as some pundits claimed, behavioural art.

Every angle had been covered, but CCTV rehashed it and revived the controversy, presumably bringing more eyeballs and responses than a typical news show of another conference or economic data trumpeting.

Now I'm no prude. I'm fully aware that sex sells and flesh sells. A media organization has to face growing competition and some have to turn profitable to ensure long-term survival. However, there are two things that make me squirm.

Truth be told, the abundance of sex-related news in no way indicates sufficient knowledge about sex. On the contrary, sex education in China is hardly adequate. Media certainly have a role to play in enlightening the public, especially the young, about the birds and bees.

The problem is, most of these news items seem to be edited and run by testosterone-filled teenage boys in search of outlets in the most improbable places. They emphasize titillating glimpses without giving the larger picture. If a dead female body floats down the river, rest assured the report will underscore the fact that she is nude. But what did she die from? Who cares.

For "nyotaimori," Chinese media presented it as traditional and highbrow, seemingly somewhere in the ballpark of the kabuki theatre, but never pointed out that it is associated with prostitution and yakuza.

Sex knowledge and sex-related news are legitimate topics and can be covered from health, social and a variety of other angles. The purely voyeuristic style that many have opted for is more like the territory for supermarket tabloids even though those engaged in it would rather be perceived as pioneers in a sex revolution.

It's not up to me to decide whether it should have a place in journalism, but juxtaposing it with other "boring" news would make neither a good Economist nor a good Star.

Far worse than curiosity-driven Peeping Toms and porn entrepreneurs disguised as newsmen are the true hypocrites. They would periodically embark on undercover digging that unveils the seedy side of society - but up from a moral high ground.

For example, a paper would do an expose of a local red-light district, with descriptions so minute and vivid as worthy of Balzac.

Then, at the end of the piece comes the moral twist, when the tone switches and screeches to one of self-righteousness moral indignation: How can such a phenomenon exist in our beautiful city? We should restore law and order, etc, etc.

Parading sex may be good business (within legal limits, that is); but denunciation of something a publication obviously so relishes would amount to biting the hand that feeds it, doesn't it?

Maybe when China's media industry matures up, each platform will find its own niche and stop acting like horny teenagers or phony adults.

E-mail: raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/17/2005 page4)