China Daily 35

The New York Times 36

Previously, China, towards disastrous news reporting, is still at exploratory stage。 According to National Knowledge Infrastructure, papers can be generally categorized into 3 parts。 First is from the macro perspective to discuss discrepancies between China and foreign countries, such as Hu Ying and Chen Lifeng compares USA Today and People Daily, focusing on Wenchuan Earthquake, aiming to demonstrate that with the wave of globalization, media discourses gradually move toward unification, however, they still differ in ideas and perspectives。 Second is to discuss characteristics。 Researches study on style, attitude, hidden elements etc。 to disclose features, e。g。 Huang Zhizhi compares valuations on interviews, samplings and communicating effects and proposes that Chinese media still lack of sufficient experience and systematic theories and present tendencies of governmentalization and socialization。 Third is based on news operations to talk about reporting methods, such as Wang Zaichen reckons in his essay The Standard of Disastrous News Headlines that making specific criterions on headlines can greatly improve news reporting’s effect。

This paper starts from a case, Nepal Earthquake in 2015, by specifically analyzing data and contents and adopting the method of functional grammar, mainly piding this paper into 3 parts: linguistic form and function, stylistics and rhetoric, culture and context, aiming to discover differences of disastrous news reporting of China Daily and The New York Times and explain reasons behind them ((i。e。, politics, culture, thinking model, value orientations)。 

Chapter Two Literature Review

2。1 Introduction of Disastrous News Reporting 

2。1。1 Definition

Disastrous incidents, characterized by its destructiveness, burstiness and variability, are always the focus that the whole society pays attention。 Theoretically, according to the nature of disasters, there are two main aspects: natural disasters and social catastrophe。 Natural disasters refer to irresistible forces caused by natural variation like geological disasters, including earthquake, debris flow and meteorological disasters which contain drought, flood and so on。 Social catastrophe means the accidents which are due to human factors or various social conflicts like car accidents, air crash or some terrorist events like Nine Eleven。

Disastrous news reporting, a rather conventional concept, does not have a rigorous definition。 It can be simply regarded as the reporting of incidents that result in disastrous damages to the society。 In terms of contents of news, disastrous events attract much more attention due to their incomparable values like timeliness, sensation, impact, enjoyment, proximity and the like (Tong 51)。 Although there are various views on the features of disastrous news reporting, however, according to the criterion used to evaluate the news system, “significant” and “sudden” which are the remarkable features of disastrous incidents are indispensable factors of breaking news。 

Besides the unique characteristics disastrous news reporting possesses naturally, another reason for the popularity and significance of it is intricate power relations within the reporting。 Virtually speaking, every piece of news reporting not only involves views of media, but also standpoints of public and government。 As a main party, media deem news to be the life no matter whether or not the media have been commercialized; however, it does not mean the media can play by heart, and from the perspective of right-to-know of the public, disastrous news reporting should be disclosed timely, namely, the public has right to know what actually happens。 Meanwhile, the disastrous incidents have a close link to the performance of the government。 In order to shape a good image or improve the reputation among the public, the government will influence the news’ production more or less。