Between The Party Spirit Principle And The Market Orientation

Adolescent delinquency has developed into such a severe social problem that it is gaining wide attention in our country, and news reports on that issue frequently appear in various kinds of media in a large amount. Then, questions arise: how much importance do news media attach to adolescent delinquency? What kinds of crimes do news media most concern? How do they report those kinds of crimes? How do they choose the news facts? In what report frames? What features do the news reports on adolescent delinquency bear? Why do they have such features? And what principles should be followed while reporting adolescent delinquency?A quantitative and qualitative approach under the frame theory to the news reports on the adolescent delinquency in Guangzhou Daily shows that the essential features of those reports are to guide the public opinion and to seek its market benefits, which are also the fundamentals that Guangzhou Daily follows to report adolescent delinquency.From the quantitative perspective, there are two characteristics in the news reports on adolescent delinquency in Guangzhou Daily: On one hand, Guangzhou Daily publishes quite a number of reports on adolescent delinquency that attracts quite a lot of readers because those reports not only meet their need to know something new and strange but also make them feel threatened, and as a result, the circulation of the paper rises, which is the way the paper seeks its market benefits. On the other hand, as adolescent delinquency is a negative social problem, Guangzhou Daily makes controlled reports on it in ways such as putting them on the pages that are not prominent, controlling the length of the reports, gaining the news mostly form the authority, etc., which embodies its feature of guiding the public opinion.From the qualitative perspective, the main characteristics in the news reports on adolescent delinquency in Guangzhou Daily are as follow: Firstly, the themes of all these reports aim to support justice, punish evil, or call for more attention to educational and family problem or more care for the youth, which guide the public opinion to a great extent. Secondly, as to the plots of the adolescent delinquency reports, Guangzhou Daily favors the violent crimes and emphasizes the description of the scenes and the crime details to seek its market benefits, and meanwhile, it highlights the criminals'final end and makes fair and just comments to guide the public opinion. Thirdly, the language used in the adolescent delinquency reports expresses the paper's emotional bias, educational orientation, as well as entertaining orientation. As to the discourse characteristics, it uses fuzzy language to protect the involved persons and employs hyperboles to catch the readers'eyes. The pictures used in the reports not only emphasize the strength of power of justice but also meet the readers'sensory needs. These all show that Guangzhou Daily both guides the public opinion and seeks its market benefits while reporting adolescent delinquency.The phenomenon that Guangzhou Daily both guides the public opinion and seek market benefit while reporting adolescent delinquency results from the newspaper's party nature as well as its living environment. On one hand, as a party paper, Guangzhou Daily has to follow the Party spirit principle and stick to the right guidance of the public opinion; on the other hand, as it lives in the market environment, it has to be market-oriented; otherwise it would be difficult to develop or even survive. It is because of the interaction of its Party spirit and its market environment that endows Guangzhou Daily's reports on adolescent delinquency with the feature of both guiding the public opinion and seeking market benefits.