Studies On News Release Mechanism Of The Chinese Government In Public Crisis

Being a necessary outwardness, the occurrence of public crisis has its social, economic, administrative and information basis. In an era of globalization when information technologies are changing with each passing day and the news communication industry is witnessing unprecedented prosperity, government of none level can manage the monopolization of crisis information when public crisis actually occurs. On the contrary, if the government takes initiative to timely release correct crisis information through the mass media, it can be quite helpful to mobilize social forces to stand against public crisis and proceed to put an end to incurred influences. Thus it has become a necessary subject for governments of each level to master the skills on how to make use of learnt information and correctly guide public opinions through news release in order to create an opinion atmosphere in favor of the elimination of crisis, and at the same time improve their administration abilities.Governmental sectors and news media in China have a quite limited understanding of public crisis for a long period of time, and governmental release of crisis news under present systems is faced with many difficulties: it is very hard to predict the development of crisis, and the release of crisis news may easily affect current interest system, causing negative impact on political fames and achievements of leaders as well as the image of local areas; what's more, citizens'right to know is not yet specified in laws in China, and the release of crisis news always gets bound when information opening regulations of each-level's government run into internal propaganda disciplines. But in occurrence of crisis, we credit it a competent and a trustworthy government only if it manages to timely release news on as well disposition information of crisis. China's mechanism for release of crisis news has already been activated and developed through the handling of some significant public crisis, such as SARS, bird's flu, and contamination of Songhua River etc, as well as a series of local crisis in recent years; still, there are many problems unsolved, for example, the practice of reporting the good news but not the bad, slow reaction and the state of passivity etc. After multi-subject investigations involving the openness of government affairs, political communications, news communication, public relations, public psychology and social development etc, this paper is going to offer an in-depth discussion on the news release mechanism of the government in public crisis through the subject, platform and concept etc of news release, and will proceed to propose that when encountering unexpected public crisis, the government should make use of news release to realize political communications, build the image of governments, arouse the public's sense of social responsibility, integrate all social classes to build a harmonious society.This paper offers innovative ideas during discussion of the following four aspects: 1. Proposal of news concept, crisis awareness, appropriate communication skills and reliability image of news promulgators, in an opinion that a smooth communication channel and mutual-trust mechanism should be established between the government and the media; 2. Discrimination and analysis of the positions and functions of press office, leaders and press spokesman in release of crisis news, and the proposal of the institutionalization, normalization and emergency reaction principles for the news release mechanism; 3. Discussion on the gaming between governmental information control and the public's right to know, followed by the proposed means to realize balanced news gaming: agenda setting,"spiral of silence", flow control, protection of right to know; 4. Based on practices of news release, this paper offers a discussion on the feasibility and prospects of the development of news release mechanism in China's government structures, and proceeds to propose that through news release, we can advocate social moral codes, construct psychological support system, integrate different social classes and promote sustained and scientific development.