Studies On Negative Profile Reports In The Publications

The negative profile report, subject of this thesis, refers to articles in newspapers and magazines reporting those corruptive and villainous officials or law offenders who commit bloody violence, murders or other forms of crimes. The negative profile report composes a regular part of the figure report and plays an important role in our news reporting. It has been seen drastically increased in number and has grown into an"eyeball"in publications since China's reform and opening to the outside world. Yet, this type of reports does not hold adequate attention in our former Journalism works. Thus, more proper attention should be paid into dealing with such a lack of relevant studies on this subject and a separation of theory from practice.Looking into the past, we would trace the origin of negative profile report back to the emergence of the modern newsletter. It started with the publication of an article titled"Chef with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Former Qing Government", which was written by Huang Yuansheng, a famous newspaperman during China's modern history. Reports of this type popped up afterwards during the Yan'an period as well as the period of China's Liberation War but almost ceased to appear in the newspaper by the then Communist Party of China during the long process of Chinese Revolution. Such a phenomenon once fit into the initial establishment of the red regime and satisfied the needs of revolution and war to a large degree.The climax in the a-hundred-year development of negative reports arrived after China's reform and opening up, reaching a great high during the end of 1990s and beginning of the 21st century. Unprecedented remarks have been achieved in terms of the size, content and writing of the negative profile report during the New Era. The upsurge of negative profile reports in this era has its roots in the strengthening of the supervision by public opinion over the whole country. Firstly, the proceeding of China's construction of democracy and laws has nourished a favorable external supervising environment; secondly, the cultivation of legal awareness and democratic consciousness in the public has provided a forcible support for supervision; lastly, the journalists'acknowledgement of their social responsibilities and the acting of their struggling spirit has contributed a lot to the improvement of quantity and quality of negative profile reports. However, limitations still co-exist with achievements yielded during the development of the negative profile report, such as the overstatement of bloody violence, vulgar taste of material and content selection, deficiency in rationally judging the criminal facts, low level of ideological position and visible misguidance of public opinion or even legal inconsistence in the reports.In the end, the thesis tries to explore the principles critical to the writing of negative profile reports and points out that: we should fully recognize the supervising function of negative profile reports; we should never ignore the role of negative profile reports while consistently giving priority to positive propaganda; we should adhere to the principle of both authenticity and objectivity in our news writing practice in the positive guidance of public opinion. In addition, we should bring the positive guiding role of negative examples into the fullest play.