This page needs radically altering. 

 Reading the posts below, it was done by students for an 
 assignment on a journalism course (?). One of them is 
 absolutely correct; it reads like a fragmented undergraduate  
 essay on the topic of journalism, not an encyclopaedia entry. 

 More importantly it utterly misrepresents the purpose of 
 Han historiography: Sima Qian did not have "the truth" 
 as a primary aim - it would be more accurate to say his  
 purpose was to construct a historical narrative that denounced  
 Han Wudi. 

 If anybody objects to me rewriting it, shout now... Gaobei