Research On Inaccurate Reports Of Shen Bao Among Sino-Japanese War

Shen Bao was the most influential newspaper in modern history, known as the Encyclopedia of Modern China. Its content is very rich, involving aspects of the country’s political, economic, cultural and social life, etc. Since its inception in 1872, Shen Bao entered into the initial phase of the newspaper market, on the form of commercial paper, welcomed by novel form, approachable vivid content and humorous language.Shen Bao focused on the authenticity of the news. At the beginning, it put forward a concept about "exaggerated and absurd words are prohibited to be published". In the press release of soliciting news, the requirements of authenticity were declared again, by stating only the news with the writer’s name would be published.In 1894, the Sino-Japanese War broke out, Shen Bao paid great attention to this war. In addition to recruiting interviewers, it also launched public solicitation among the country, and reproduced or translated other newspapers’s reports, etc. Despite this, a lot of inaccurate plots still occurred.There are many types of inaccurate plots, which can be divided into partial inaccurate, overall inaccurate, and literary inaccurate.Objective and subjective factors took the responsibility of inaccurate reporting.In terms of objective factors, centralized information control is the primary factor. The Qing Dynasty prohibited reporters to follow the army and report the war, never releaseed war communique to the media, and did not allow business newspapers to deliver war news by telegraph. Under such a restriction, it was difficult to achieve true story for Shen Bao.In terms of subjective factors, reporter’s relatively low quality should bear the main responsibility. Journalism of that period was considered as dishonorable profession. Decent people mostly refused to do the job, except for those who could not find a way out. Reporters were mostly part-time, with limited capacity. In order to make more money, they often took hearsay into news. More seriously, sometimes they directly fabricated news.Despite the large numbers of inaccurate news, Shen Bao never gave up the efforts to pursue news reality, which reflected in two aspects:Firstly, Shen Bao took cross-checking of information before the occurrence of inaccurate reports; Secondly, After the occurrence of inaccurate reports, Shen Bao corrected and supplemented inaccurate reports through continuous coverage. News reality is a dynamic process, we cannot judge Shen Bao by single inaccurate report, instead, we should consider the overall situation.This study focuses on the cause of inaccuracy reporting, which is still meaningful in present day. Nowadays the concept of journalistic professionalism is more prevalent, social environment is relatively tolerant, and information dissemination is much more sophisticated, inaccuracy reporting is still emerging, and some even more sensational,which is even worse than Shen Bao. Research on the inaccuracy reporting of Shen Bao will make people realize that traces of inaccurate reporting will not disappear as time passes, but be a shame that cannot be eliminated.