The irony of that statement rarely escapes those hearing it. As much as journalists spend their entire careers pursuing the Holy Grail of truth, they know that every now and again, they'll end up simply drinking from a carpenter's cup.

There's something else that's well-known to veteran reporters, though it's far less amusing: Fear sells. That's why when tired old stereotypes about danger are rolled out, whether it be terrorists under the bed in the United States, companies wanting to take our Czech children away for mercenary work, or dangerous kung pao, it behooves a good journalist to check and double-check the facts.

The circumstances of the story or the news-gathering process often conspire against an accurate rendition of the facts. Other rival interests — competition, circulation, the "scoop mentality" — begin competing with truth as the steering-star for news judgment.

And this ethical descent is common to media anywhere in the world. Two local cases reported this week underscore the risk: A single news report on the conditions at one Chinese restaurant in Kladno triggered a wave of raids against Chinese food restaurants everywhere — later recharacterized as a crackdown on "exotic" restaurants — often at the prompting of reporters, according to the Czech Trade Inspection. Meanwhile, no real evidence has demonstrated that these restaurants operate significantly differently from any other eateries.

At the same time, widespread reports in the Czech media have highlighted the alarming phenomenon of Czech soldiers of fortune signing on to mercenary companies in Iraq — a great story, except for one inconvenient detail: It hasn't really happened. The Czech Embassy in Baghdad says that less than a half-dozen Czechs have signed on as private security workers, and media headlines here of widespread recruiting — including a weeping mother attempting to stop her 20-year-old son from heading off to be a soldier of fortune in Iraq — are highly doubtful.

What should trouble both readers and journalists about these stories is that they not only varnish the news to give their impact a false glow, but they also do some measure of harm to the people that they write about and the public at large. The Chinese food story, for example, plays on the weary and borderline racist cliché that Asian restaurants are dirty, serve mystery meat, and operate on the fringe of the law.

The Czech Embassy, meanwhile, warns that the "hired guns in Iraq" story may well endanger Czech civil contractors there, since insurgents may begin to view them as military operatives who use contractor status as a cover, and thereby subject them to attacks, kidnapping or worse.