LAST YEAR, a pair of books blasted my sometimes dubious profession. The comic, nostalgic Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? chronicles a twenty-something Thomas Kohnstamm's attempt to update Lonely Planet: Brazil. Having graduated from Stanford University with an M.A. in Latin American studies, he hopes his humble revision will somehow "help us all to understand humanity and our common needs and desires a bit better." Pffft. After Kohnstamm discovers he has only $283 to cover half the Brazilian coast, an amused hotelier in Canoa Quebrada fills him in on the truth: Guidebooks are full of cheaply bought encomiums and the

While it's true that travel writers are occasionally guilty of selective reporting, crafting misleading descriptions, accepting freebies, and any number of lesser transgressions, it's not as bad you think.

writers are lushes. Kohnstamm embraces the hustle in gloriously low style, beginning that night, when he ends up having sex with a waitress on a table in a sushi restaurant. His subsequent review: "a pleasant surprise … and the table service is friendly."

More emphatic but no less amusing, Chuck Thompson, the former editor in chief of Travelocity magazine, weighs in with his Smile When You're Lying, which accuses travel magazines of prudishness, political correctness, cheerleading, inauthenticity, clichés, and an irrational love for the Caribbean. "The whole place," he writes, "needs a fresh coat of paint."

The cannonade hit so squarely amidships that a New York Times reviewer scolded Kohnstamm's "piping of the facts" before admitting he thoroughly enjoyed "the most depraved travel book of the year." Jason Wilson, longtime editor of the Best American Travel Writing series, sounded like he took the attacks more personally, referring to the books as "overheated reports from the underbelly."

While it's true that travel writers are occasionally guilty of selective reporting, crafting misleading descriptions, accepting freebies, and any number of other, lesser transgressions, it's not as bad you think. For starters, the easiest way to decipher the straight scoop from a straight scoop of hooey is to ask the fundamental question of literary criticism: Does this suck? If the answer is yes, then raise your guard, for the article you are reading is very likely the result of a so-called press trip.

Press trips are tours organized and paid for by the Tourism Bureau of Guyana or Snapping Turtle Outfitters or the organizers of the Red Desert Chili Cook-Off and Marathon. The goal of these junkets, of course, is to celebrate the aforementioned sponsors. Hundreds and hundreds are offered each year, and invariably they combine a high degree of pampering with strictly scheduled "adventures," such as "a guided visit to a reindeer herder's encampment where you can photograph their amazing yoik chanting, from 3:35 to 3:50." Invitations arrive first to those who've offered favorable coverage in the past and then to members of the Society of American Travel Writers, an organization that exists, as best I can tell, to facilitate editorial fawning by kind and often whiny semiretired newspaper hacks.

The New York Times and other big broadsheets make a point of not accepting such freebies, a contract admirable in theory but easily broken in practice. (Essentially, a hopeful freelancer has to fess up about past press trips and agree not to accept any more freebies and the case is closed.) Magazines with bigger budgets can afford to be more selective but are certainly not above it all. Some, such as Condé Nast Traveler, really do, as far as we know, pay for everything in full, while others only cough up for a so-called "media rate," which might translate to paying just 40 bucks for a night at a five-star hotel.

Outside editors collectively take about a dozen press trips a year, with the policy that, before accepting, a disclaimer is issued along the lines of "I can't guarantee coverage, but I'd be surprised if a positive mention of [insert name here] didn't wind up in the mag." Sometimes a story follows soon thereafter. Sometimes it doesn't. Often, a writer will use a press trip for reconnaissance. He might relish the same "wonderfully jammy Shiraz" that another "journalist" on the trip gushes about in print later. But he won't write about it. Instead, he'll report on the hidden, verdant canyon system … that his masseuse happened to tell him about.