A Comparative Study Of Major Events In Sino - American Newspapers

The report of mega-events is one of the important measures of comprehensive strength of a medium. In recent years, the level of the mega-event reports of Chinese media has improved a lot, however compared with the western news media, there is still a certain gap. Therefore, the comparison of mega-event reports of Chinese and western media can serve as a reference for our mega-event reports. On June 5,2013, Edward snowden, the former employee of central intelligence agency, threw light on a secret surveillance program of the National Security Agency, code-named PRISM. With the continuous disclosure of snowden, the monitoring scope expands unceasingly. It can be said to be the largest surveillance event in American history. This event caused extensive concern and continued report of Chinese and western media, so selecting this event as the research object has typical significance. This paper selects PRISM event as case study, using combining research methods of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, to do statistics and analysis on report time, quantity, theme, tendency, type and news source of the relative reports of the people’s daily and the New York Times. It summarizes the differences in the coverage about PRISM of this two newspapers and analyzes the hidden reasons. It analyzes the deficiencies existing in the report of the people’s daily and puts forward the corresponding suggestions on this basis in order to improve the level of mega-event reports of Chinese media.The content of this paper is divided into four chapters. The introduction introduces the research origin, significance, thought and method of this paper. The first chapter introduces the concepts and theories of mega-event, comparative journalism and frame. The second chapter do statistics and analysis on report time, quantity, theme, tendency, type and news source of the relative reports of the people’s daily and the New York Times. The third chapter summarizes the differences in the coverage about PRISM of this two newspapers and explores the reasons behind the differences.The fourth chapter analyzes the deficiencies existing in the reports of the people’s daily and puts forward the corresponding suggestions.