Disaster Reporting Research In China

The disaster goes accompany with the development of the human society. The report about disaster is one kind of the important themes in the news dissemination activity. It is also the important yardstick to measure the core capabilities and core value orientation of the media. Throughout the news reports about disaster in the contemporary China, it experienced an unique and rheological process.Before the reform and opening up, the news about disaster has been the "reports box" of Chinese media. Because it was affected and limited by the expression framework of traditional disaster and operating inertia in the long time. We can see the serious lack of China’s media from the earthquake of Tonghai and Tangshan in1970’s. In the more than30years of reform and opening up, China’s news dissemination enterprise has generally made a considerable development. The sacred duty of the news media is the information dissemination and the main channel of guiding public opinion. The environment of news dissemination is constantly coalescing and opening. The concept of the news reports keeps pace with the times. China’s media showed the professional quality and humanistic feelings in the reports about the earthquake of Wenchuan in2008and Qinghai Yushu in2010. This won the praise of the international community and also promoted our national image. These changes made the paper mainly study three questions:What is the way and concept of news reports about the earthquake of Tonghai and Tangshan in1970’s? What is different from the news reports about earthquake of Wenchuan and Yushu? Where are the reasons?This paper based on study status about the existed disaster news reports in domestic market. It made the earthquake reports for perspective from our main media to the four different historical period in Tonghai, Tangshan, Wenchuan and Yushu. Through analysing and studying, it combed systematacially the difference in report way about disaster news and the evolving track in the report concept from Chinese media since the new China has been founded. And it concentrated the historical developing trend of state news reform.The full paper is divided into four parts. First, the concept of disaster reports was defined. On that basis, the news value about disaster reports was analysed. The second and third parts are the studied key in this paper. The second part made a whole historical overview to characteristics of the four earthquake reports from the timeliness, transparency and the other aspects of the reports. Using People’s Daily as the main sample and the news frame theory as the support, the third part specifically analysed the difference in the four earthquake reports by the content analysis method from these levels, such as the report theme, report content, news type, report position, leading role of news and news discourse. It expounded further that the news reports framework about the earthquake of Tonghai and Tangshan in1970’s is the’top-down political propaganda’framework and Wenchuan and Yushu is the’political propaganda leading and the humanistic care with stable fundamental key’framework. On this basis, it found out that the original causes which resulted in the enormous contrast in the reports way and concept about the four earthquakes are the change of national news policy system, different of media properties and value orientation of their own news, changes of the public subject consciousness and revolution and influence of international communication environment. The fourth part is the summary. It made the summaried induction and rational thinking to how to further change the idea, follow the rule of the news spreading, advance the publicity of the information, improve the social responsibility consciousness of the media, strive for international discourse replying to disaster events, further maintain a good image of our country and the other problems in the disaster reports from Chinese media in the new period. And it draw preliminary the prospects for the further development of our mass media, which is expected to provide certain reference and reference.The news report about disaster in our country is a relatively new field. The government and the media didn’t have a lot of experience accumulated. So, we need to reconstruct the relationship between the government and media, construct actively the new report system about disaster and provide a more adequate operating space for the ’media access’in the disaster events. This has the important meaning in promoting the national discourse right on our media replying to the disaster event and pushing the politicized process of China’s democracy.