The Symbol Formation Of Metropolis Newspaper To Subjective Truth

Journalism is meant to be a way to objectively represent true affairs. However the subjective ideology of journalism personnel permeates every link of the multimedia production chain. Some people in this industry are inclined to make up stories out of personal ideas combined with media symbols thus deprive what's the truth from what they are reporting. On the other hand the readers tend to believe various reports for they think whatever is printed in black and white is the truth. This paper intends to make a comparison between《Xiaoxiang Morning Post》and《Sanxiang Metro Post》, two influential local papers of Changsha, so as to make clear the relationship among the reality of media symbol, the subjective truth and the objective truth.In the first chapter principles of semiology is introduced, in detail and the ways in which symbolic meanings are formed and make sense are discussed too. Through the formation of symbolic meanings, the diction or selection of certain language, as well as the structure of reports, mass media seek to build up a special symbolic mentality which could reinforce the conventional social values and norms. To paraphrase this process, we may call it the ideological infiltration of the advantage class.The second chapter presents an analysis of two special coverages reported by《Xiaoxiang》and《Sanxiang》on the same issue, the Wenchuan earthquake. Comparisons about the differences of the ways in which these two papers build their media symbols are made at three levels:the presentation of symbols, the meaning of symbols and blind faith from readers, and ideology analysis.In the third and last chapter analysis is made to explore why there are deviations in constructing the symbolic system during its process from the perspectives of journalism rules, the judgment of social consensus and social values, and the organization and standpoints of media. A newspaper man is obliged to recognize the differences and retrospect his own processing, find out the confinement derived from their limited professional knowledge and conventional ideology, so as to minimize his reporting errors or mistakes and fulfill his social responsibility through representing the setting of the news affair, presenting the affair in multiple ways, and fairly using different sources of news, using comments.The major research approaches in this paper is content analysis and comparative study.