Note: I wrote this during the summer before my final year at university, when I was planning to apply for a master’s degree in journalism and communication and therefore began studying journalism. I found that journalism was not a science but an applied discipline with a strong orientation toward practical guidance, and these thoughts prompted me to write this essay. While organizing materials this evening, I found it and realized that it was a complete piece rather than an unfinished draft, so I am publishing it on my WeChat official account without changing a word. It is rather dry, but perhaps still worth reading. The original text follows:

News activity originates in people’s need for information. Organizations specializing in gathering and publishing information were the beginnings of the news industry. When such information is published for the general public, the industry enters the stage of mass communication. The journalism we study focuses on the news enterprise, meaning mass media. But we should understand that the news enterprise is only one particular form of news activity, which exists in every aspect of life.

In a broad sense, news is information about recent changes in facts, according to Li Liangrong. For studying the news industry, more specific formulations are “news is the reporting of recently occurring facts” (Lu Dingyi) and “news is a narrative of objectively occurring facts that possess news value” (Chen Lidan). For something to be news, it must be “heard”: there must be a publisher and a receiver, which means the participation of human subjects. Since news arises from a need and takes a narrative form, Chen Lidan’s definition is somewhat more accurate.

As the saying goes, “change produces news, and relationships determine needs.” In fact, matter is always in absolute motion, and change too is relative to people. For example, the Earth has orbited the Sun in the universe for more than four billion years. For a long time, however, this orbit had little significance for humans and was neither understood nor recognized, let alone treated as news. Only when the Earth’s orbit was discovered did it become news; once the public accepted this fact, it ceased to be news. This “need” determines the significance news has for people, and that significance is news value.

“This is news to me.” That sentence tells us that news value is particular: in each specific instance of news activity, the audience’s own needs determine whether something counts as news. News value also has a general dimension. For mass-media workers, if a certain number of audience members regard something as newsworthy, then the report has news value.

A report that does not match the facts can also be news. As long as people generally recognize it as news, it is news; fake news is still news and is often major news. Take the death of Yuan Longping, for example. After CGTN reported it, people saw the report, considered it important, and trusted its source, so they believed it. At that moment, it was news. Later, when it was discovered to be false, that discovery was news too. From the receiver’s standpoint, information is abundant and confused, some true and some false; even true information is incomplete. Sorting and organizing it is the receiver’s task. One obvious consequence of this process is that audiences come to distrust media outlets that frequently publish false information. Given this, news publishers who want their audiences’ trust must emphasize and uphold truthfulness in reporting.

The news enterprise is only a service. News can emerge and attract readers only when the public has a general demand for it; people will be willing to undertake its publication only when news can generate sufficient commercial and political benefits. These are the conditions under which the news enterprise arises, showing its historical character. To emphasize historicity is to emphasize that something’s emergence is conditional and its disappearance inevitable. When the public has no need to obtain different kinds of information about society, it does not need enormous news organizations. This is why ancient societies had no news industry. When the public’s demand for information no longer requires authoritative institutions and professionals, the news industry will disappear. My view is that it will disappear in communist society. At that point—[perhaps technological progress will make news production simple, or perhaps many people will participate in producing a news story through some new mechanism]—everyone will be a publisher and receiver of public information, and people will no longer need professional, authoritative media. There will still be “news,” but no longer a “news industry” of the kind we have today. The specific mechanisms will have to emerge through continued development. Today’s online independent media, internet-based technologies, and new forms of news may be an early form of humanity’s future news landscape. The disappearance of the traditional news industry is a slow process, and mainstream media still enjoy an overwhelming advantage.

In the past, journalism studied traditional mainstream media. It now includes many new forms of news based on new technologies, but its overall framework has already taken shape. Journalism arose from a summing-up of earlier news practice, and its views, understandings, and requirements bear a deep political imprint. Journalism is, in essence, political science. For example, emphasizing that facts are the source of news and stressing news objectivity reflected the need to emphasize politics during the 1941 rectification movement. In academic work, every study had to stress that it was materialist and dialectical. Another example is the emphasis on news sources, which guides reporters in interviewing and writing reports. Or consider the emphasis on the connections and distinctions between propaganda and news: historically, news was a fucking offshoot of propaganda. Only when its economic value was discovered did distinguishing the two become necessary.

The news enterprise must serve politics and commerce: that is the real law of the contemporary news industry. If reporting something newsworthy would harm the political situation, do not report it. If occasional false reports bring more traffic, there is no need to deal with them too strictly. Cleaning up disorder in the news industry aims to increase public trust in news, thereby improving propaganda’s effectiveness and making more money. Journalism, meanwhile, seeks a coherent explanation that can both guide practitioners and fit mainstream thinking. Truthfulness in news has always been only a requirement and an aspiration, never a law. Journalism contains elements of truth, but even more elements of ideology. Only by accepting this can we avoid a mental split when connecting textbooks with reality.

4 a.m., Tuesday, August 15, 2023

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