Abstract With the popularity of culture comparison, the contrastive study of news coverage of China and America has aroused great concern. Disaster news is always unexpected, remarkable, important and complex. A conclusion can be drawn from the contrastive study of reports on Wen Chuan Earthquake of People’s Daily and New York Times: due to different cultures, different viewpoints on relations between nature and human and different values and orientations, differences of two countries’ disaster news reports mainly lie in four aspects: news views; contents, news themes and report angles. 61657

This paper investigates the influences of different cultures on disaster news reports, and it aims to explore a more positive and suitable way for Chinese news media in disaster news reports: to show the humanistic care; to value the report on other disaster areas; to avoid blindly “positive” and to avoid excessively “bloody”.

Key words: disaster news reports; People’s Daily; New York Times

摘要随着文化比较的流行, 对中美新闻报道的对比研究受到越来越多的关注。灾难性新闻具有突发性、显著性、重要性和复杂性等特点。本文通过对《人民日报》和《纽约时报》关于汶川地震报道的对比研究发现，由于文化差异、人与自然关系的差异和价值取向的差异，两者在新闻观点，内容，主题和报道角度这四个方面存在不同。

通过探讨不同文化对灾难性新闻报道的影响，本文旨在探究一种更积极、更适合我国新闻媒介的灾难性新闻报道的方式：注重人文关怀；重视其他灾区的报道；避免一“正面化”；抵制过分“血腥化”。

毕业论文关键词：灾难性新闻报道；人民日报；纽约时报

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. A Case Study of Wen Chuan Earthquake 2

4. An Analysis of Chinese and American Disaster News Reports 4

4.1 Similarities 5

4.2 Differences 5

5. Reasons for Differences between Two Countries’ Disaster News Reports 6

5.1 Different Cultures Reflected in News Reports 6

5.2 Different Viewpoints upon the Relations of Nature and Human 6

5.3 Different Values and Orientation 7

6. Strategies to Improve Chinese Disaster News Reports 8

6.1 Emphasizing the Humanistic Care 8

6.2 Valuing the Report on Other Disaster Areas 8

6.3 Avoiding Blindly “Positive” 9

6.4 Avoiding Excessively “Bloody” 10

7. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction 

News reports have played an important role in people’s daily life. With the frequent occurrence of natural disasters at home and abroad in recent years, more and more people begin to pay great attention to disaster news. Disasters are always abnormal, unexpected, destructive and closely related to people’s life. It has been the focus of public opinion. The so-called disaster news refers to the reports on events that bring disaster to human. Disasters mean a large number of human and animal casualties and material damage. They are caused by uncontrollable and unpredictable destructive factors, and the region disaster prevention can’t solve them. From the current literature, the disaster events generally can be pided into two kinds: natural disaster and social emergency.