2。1。2 Background 

Some researchers hold that affected by politics, economy, culture and other factors, Chinese and western media react differently toward the same disaster。 Hao Fengling (1) in her paper writes that “the way to report disastrous news not only reflects the choices and characteristics of media on value orientations, reporting concept and methods, but also presents influences resulted from the whole society, such as political and cultural environment, economic development, social regulation on media ecosystem” 。

China and western countries have different histories on covering disastrous news。 Disastrous incidents are always the focus and preference of the western media especially America。 Throughout annual Pulitzer Prize for journalism and World Press Photo Awards, investigative reporting and news, which circle around murder cases, disasters and wars, take large proportion。 Since the first newspaper came into being at the modern time, western presses have experienced six different periods, i。e。, “miscellaneous paper”, “simple record”, “interesting reporting”, “sensational reporting” , “objective reporting” and “in-depth reporting” (Li 15) and disastrous news at different periods shows corresponding characteristics as well。 In recent years, western media, as America for example, tend to report news in a more vivid and direct way。 The factors to which western media should pay attention are satisfying the public right to know, protecting privacy, telling right from wrong and the like。 As for China, stabilization-oriented and unity-oriented principles are in vogue and disastrous news is often viewed as too negative to maintain social stability and does harm to the country。 According to different times, the history of Chinese newspaper can be pided into “feudal period”, “modern time”, “contemporary period”, “liberation-war period” and “the lately 80s”(6)。With the development of Reform and Openness and Revolution of News, China also begins to chase the most authentic side of the facts and meaningful orientations towards the news。