Research On The People's Daily Editorials In The Great Leap Forward Period

The editorial is the "soul" and banner of the newspaper, and also is the most important guiding remarks in the media editorial department."People's Daily" editorial represents the voices and views of the Party Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and exert an important influence on the development of Chinese society as a whole. During Great Leap Forward period,"People's Daily" editorial had abandoned the "Bagu Wind" and the readability of language had been enhanced through a series of press reform. However, lively and moving text combined with the wrong news ideas and a distorted social values results in a very bad influence.In this period, the "communist wind","rhetorical style","command style","whim Wind,""cadres special wind" prevailed, blew up a social unrest in seeking to catch up fast blindly; while, state power was highly centralized and political leaders grasp the absolute right to speak. Thus, journalists lost their independence and freedom of expression. The environment of expression continues to deteriorate. In this situation, the "People's Daily" editorial formed an "impractical","grandiose""superfluous" language style, specifically in the form of editorial content and language. In the content of editorials, there are many false, exaggerated and bragging contents; as to linguistic form, the language of war are frequent, creating tension; editorials are full of imperative tone, which directly intervene the economic production. In the editorial logic, clandestine change of argumentative issue, misuse of analogical reasoning and lack of evidences are three main logic errors. Political propaganda function of editorials obscures its speculative colors. As to editorial topics, most theme of editorials come from the guidelines and routes of Chinese Communist Part, instead of the sound from the private sector. What's more, editorials indiscriminately publicized the party's principles and policies and lost the ability to think independently. These weaknesses of editorials played a negative role in advertising "five wind", accelerating the "Great Leap Forward" and misleading the government decision-making. Lying has become common practice, which brought grave disaster to the Chinese society.Today, half a century after the Great Leap Forward;"the anomie People's Daily editorial during that period provides a profound lesson for today's journalists and make people aware of the great importance of editorial in the regular publications, which represents the position of newspapers, the orientation and strength of our society. The injustice and untruth will not only greatly damage the spirit of a newspaper but will also mislead the public opinion, resulting in an extremely bad influence on our society. However, creating a real justice editorial is not only closed related with personal news journalists ideals and journalistic ethics, but also including the political system, news system and ethical climate Highly centralized political system and news system necessarily restricted journalists'freedom of speech and carried out uniform public opinion environment. Therefore, for journalists, they should be equipped with a good work ethic and open their mouths bravely; for the state and society, our nation and society should also undertake the obligation to create a democratic and liberal environment for editorials.