A comparative study of differences between newspapers in China and America

Due to the economic, cultural and social backgrounds are different, Chinese and the western newspapers reports are quite different in terms of expectation of content, news writing, and the bias of newspapers. I'd like to present the differences from these three aspects and make particular analysis.

First, the expectation of content of the two kinds of newspapers is different. Chinese news is the socialistic journalism. Newspapers, particularly the national newspapers have received the direct leadership of the Central Propaganda Department. And they stressed the party spirit, the party's line, principles and policies as their most important task, so the publicity function is more important than the other functions. And the reported figures tend to heroes, models and other advanced characters.

However, in America entertainment has become a priority task in today's media, news is being treated as a special entertainment industry. For example, the sports competition has uncertain outcome, the intensity of the process and the variability, so American newspapers fully take advantage of these features in its news reports to appeal more and more readers, in order to attract advertisers who can bring large amount of advertising revenues.

Second, the differences of Chinese and Western writing skillswill be presented from the aspects of the headlines, pictures, figures depiction and the use of direct quotation.

(1) Chinese news headlines are generally on the news brief, so that could be read clearly, but most were relatively dull. Western news always uses abstract titles and exaggerates a kind of feelings, this suspense is set up to attract readers to continue to read the text.

(2) With the arrival of "an era of pictures”, American newspapers are often reported in the press coupled with pictures, seize extremely convincing image of the moment, greatly improved the readability of the newspaper press. By contraries, Chinese newspapers still lack the awareness of attracting readers by photographs. Chinese news are coupled with little picture. Even with photographs, they are generally black and white, or very small, having no good visual results.

(3) Chinese newspapers focus on abstract thinking and ignore details on the content, so that the personal image is low. Abstract thinking embodied in the reported figures makes the personality characteristics of people in the news have a strong conceptual and subjective. Statements reported in the figures used to express the author of the subjective feelings of people in the news, to deepen the perception of readers and to enhance reports appealing. Western focus on the image of thinking, things objectively reflects the direct mapping, sending rich information to deepen people's understanding. Meanwhile, the diversity of thinking reflected in the reported figures endues the character traits with multidimensional nature and rich meaning.

(4) Direct quotation enables readers to directly listen to the news who "speak”, and enable the reader to feel the news is true. Using the direct quotation establishes direct links between the speakers and the readers. Western media used to add direct quotation in the report to enhance its credibility. However, Chinese news reports usually lack of direct quotations.

Third, the apparent perspective and possible bias of the newspapers are different in different countries. Chinese newspapers are all state-owned, belonging to the party, and the main function is the publicity, so it generally gives positive reports.

However, the United States is a highly developed commercial society, all media operations are to be able to win the largest commercial interests as the supreme principle. The interests of Media and sponsorship are closely linked together. Some big media itself has teams or major competitions, or acts as the main sponsor. Therefore, some newspapers in United States effected by its sponsors and advertisers inevitably, to some extent they destroy the news objectivity.