The Study About Sino-Japanese War’s Reports Of Lat Pau

In the year of 1894, the Sino-Japanese War broke out, Singapore’s first Chinese daily "Lat Pau" made a detail follow-up reports on the war and had a profound impact on the local Chinese community.In 1881, realizing "the overseas Chinese confined to old customs and don’t care about national affairs", Xue YouLi established the "Lat Pau". The newspaper published in 52 years and stopped publication in 1932.At the beginning,the newspaper was always publishing preaching articles to introduce Chinese traditional Confucianism and the circulation dropped. After the war broke out, the newspaper began to focus on domestic reform and made a large-scale reports.During that time nearly 900 news manuscripts were published and the circulation gradually rose.The "Sino-Japanese telegraph" is a special column on the "Lat Pau" during the war.The content was all related to the war and the theme changed with the development of the war, such as "Sino-Japanese telegraph"、" Sino-Japanese conference telegraph",etc. The "British Virgin Telegraph" and "the Telegraph From Lv" were used as the main sources.Interestingly, the paper were always critical to them.For example, "Lat Pau"chose "the British Virgin Telegraph" as the main source,but it questioned the authenticity of the "British Virgin telegram" content as it’s always opposite to the newspaper’s position.During the War, "Lat Pau" published 204 related editorials on the front pages, the total number of words was more than 20 million.The editorials’theme changed with the development of the war. While the editorials always uphold patriotism, published some "Middle Kingdom" pedantic argument, but they also published insights on the postwar reforms.It is noteworthy that,in addition to the common war news, the "Lat Pau" was still reflect the war by the advertisement.In the advertisement of "Korean map consignment",the paper condemned the injustice of Japan and defined their position.There are many factors that influence the position of the newspaper and the most important factor is the editor Ye JiYun.He worked for the newspaper for 41 years and played a leading role. Affected by the traditional Confucianism, Ye JiYun is conservative, loyalty.In reporting,he tended to the Qing Dynasty and made public pressure to Japan.However, the patriotism led to a lack of reporting authenticity and objectivity, affected the audience perception.