Such is literally the case at the annual dinner, where journalists serve as a supporting cast, but it has been figuratively true year-round.

David S. Broder, a political reporter and columnist for The Washington Post, said journalists should not serve as "policy advocates" on television programs.

The journalist, Gao Yu, now 55, had served all but nine months of a six-year sentence, given at a closed trial in 1993 for "revealing state secrets."

Here the journalists serve as their own makeup artists, hairdressers and stylists.

Because journalism's first loyalty is to the citizenry, journalists are obliged to tell the truth and must serve as an independent monitor of powerful individuals and institutions within society.

American business leaders, scholars, journalists and political figures will serve as unsalaried faculty.

A journalist is serving time for comparing a Kurdish guerrilla leader to Garibaldi, and a playwright was convicted of "insulting the military."

Under an amendment to the Criminal Code passed last week, the journalist could serve seven years in jail for insulting a public official, even if the story was true.

Because they had already spent that long in police custody, the journalists had served their sentence, the judge ruled.

And the Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least three Iraqi journalists have served time in prison for writing articles deemed criminally offensive.