Over the past few weeks as the News of the World phone hacking scandal has unfolded, several Chinese media outlets have gleefully reported the events.

One Xinhua article stated, "Western media and countries always accuse others in the name of 'freedom' and 'human rights.' Experts believe the hacking incident challenges the Western journalism system and its superiority."

Guangming Daily said, "Some Western media and politicians who attack the Marxist approach to journalism should stop and carefully consider themselves and how they provided perfect conditions and development space for the Murdoch eavesdropping scandal."

Once again, these observers seem to think the entire Western media is of one mind and that the whole system, as well as anyone who's ever criticized China's media, is accountable for one agency's transgressions. After reading these outlets' unbelievable, yet totally unsurprising, claims that the scandal shows the inferiority of a free press to a state-controlled one, only two words spring to mind: You wish.

Admittedly, there are advantages to a state-controlled media. It certainly makes it easier to direct public opinion in one direction, as opposed to examples like the recent debt-ceiling crisis in the US. There's also something to be said for the security and confidence viewers feel when the bulk of the news they see from some media is that the leaders are busy, the people are happy and unrest is either happening in or caused by foreign countries.

But let's acknowledge the other implications. Shortly after the recent Wenzhou train accident, reporters received orders to use official information and not to investigate the accident themselves. Official explanations could be true, but with the media's hands tied, the families of those killed and the hundreds of millions who travel by train in China will never know.

Even worse was the 2003 SARS epidemic when the Chinese media was barred from reporting the full extent of the outbreak. Several weeks passed before a doctor broke the silence and warned the world of the situation's gravity. In the end over 900 died and thousands more became ill. How many were needlessly infected because of the media clampdown? How many other dangers and travesties go unreported? How many criminals still hold powerful positions because of the media's inability to go after them?

The invasion of privacy people suffered at the hands of unscrupulous News of the World reporters shouldn't be belittled, but at the same time, their plight should be honestly weighed against the alternative.

True, a free press relying on ratings for income is especially vulnerable to sensationalism and bias. Partisan outlets poisoning political discourse and tabloids resorting to criminal activities are very real side-effects of such a system. But sensationalism and bias exist under any media format. And unlike the alternative, a free press has built-in mechanisms for correcting itself.

During the News of the World scandal, the Western media's independent nature ensured that competing outlets were quick to investigate and pounce on the tabloid's total disregard for ethics. The paper was shut down thanks in part to the ensuing public outcry and advertisers' unwillingness to associate with it. And now responsible parties all the way up to Rupert Murdoch himself must answer for the crimes before the British parliament.

Murdoch's News Corp may be a product of the Western free press, but it's hardly a poster child for it. The lack of journalistic integrity has been contrasted and offset by scores of serious Western journalists.

One is Carl Bernstein, who recently blasted Murdoch's empire for replacing journalistic ideals and the pursuit of truth with "gossip, sensationalism and manufactured controversy." Bernstein was one of the reporters to expose former US President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal, setting a benchmark followed to this day in the West that even a nation's most powerful leader isn't above public scrutiny. And he was able to do it because of a free press.

So those trying to find ways to justify the restrictions on China's media had better keep looking.

The author is a master's candidate of Global Business Journalism at Tsinghua University. ericfish85@gmail.com.

China's problems no excuse for ignoring rightful criticism