News is the first draft of history. During the COVID-19 epidemic, nearly 700 journalists reporting on the frontlines in Hubei continuously sent us real voices from the frontlines, and the public's demand for news also increased significantly.
During this period, TV news programs such as "Common Concern," "Oriental Horizon," and "News 1+1" had high viewership ratings, and magazines such as "Caixin Weekly," "Sanlian Life Weekly," and "People" sold out, and even started rare pre-sale modes.
On the internet, article after article was shared on social media, and the sound of "public opinion bombs" exploded. Amidst the noise, some news reports quickly disappeared, disappearing along with the newly revealed truth in the public's discussions.
According to incomplete statistics from Young Weekly, a total of 41 news reports (tweets) from 18 mainstream media outlets and occasionally influential self-media outlets such as Beijing Youth Daily, Bingdian Weekly, Economic Observer, Caixin, The Paper, and China News Network were deleted or blocked during the epidemic.
What do these "erased" news reports have in common? Why were they "erased"?
Young Weekly will analyze these 41 news reports (tweets) that were 404'd from five aspects: the publishing media (official accounts), the publishing time, the type of report, the emotional bias of the report, and the perspective of the report, and write their own "epitaphs."
1
Financial media occupies a significant proportion
First, through a chart, we can get an overview of the content, publication dates, and publishing media (official accounts) of these 41 disappeared news reports (tweets).
Among the disappeared news reports (tweets), from the earliest "Dialogue with WH Frontline Medical Staff: All Isolation Wards Are Full, Colleagues Are Infected" published by Interface News on January 23, to "People" official account's publication of "The Person Who Sent SZ," and "Bingdian Weekly" published "WH Central Hospital Doctor: C Virus Reaction Time Given to Everyone Is Too Short" on March 13, some disappeared inexplicably and were quickly forgotten, while others remained in the public's memory even after disappearing.
Looking at the publishing media (official accounts), among the media outlets with a larger number of "disappeared" reports, the top three are Interface News, Caixin, and Caijing Magazine, all of which are top-notch professional financial media. In fact, in addition to these three financial media outlets, other financial media outlets such as China Business News, Economic Observer, and First Financial Daily also had "disappeared" reports on the epidemic.
From this perspective, among the 18 mainstream media outlets that published these "disappeared" news reports, one-third of them are financial media outlets, and the contribution and significance of financial media outlets in epidemic reporting cannot be ignored.
2
Almost daily disappearance of reports
On January 20, Zhong Nanshan confirmed the existence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on the CCTV news program "News 1+1" when he was connected with Bai Yansong, gradually attracting the attention of the entire nation. Two days later, on January 23, Interface News published the report "Dialogue with WH Frontline Medical Staff: All Isolation Wards Are Full, Colleagues Are Infected." From then until March 13, nearly two months, news reports disappeared one by one.
From February 4 to February 27, nearly a month, and from March 2 to March 13, these 12 days, news reports were almost "erased" from the internet every day.
Taking February 26 as an example, on this day, Caixin published "Exclusive | Tracing the Origin of the Novel Coronavirus Gene Test: When Did the Alarm Sound?" and "Voices from the Frontline Doctors: Please Support Us, International Colleagues," while Caijing Magazine published "Exclusive Interview with the Second Batch of Experts Sent by the National Health Commission to WH: Why Didn't We Discover Human-to-Human Transmission?" reflecting on whether relevant departments reported the situation and whether the early research by National Health Commission experts was inadequate. Soon after, the pages of these three reports all showed that they could not be viewed.
3
Focus of reports on doctors and patients
From the perspective of the reports that "disappeared," their main subjects were doctors, patients, and social issues (including discrimination against Wuhan residents in other regions, difficulties faced by Chinese people abroad, etc.), as well as issues related to resuming work, the government, discussions on why the best prevention period was missed, supplies, the situation of the epidemic (both domestic and international), volunteer activities, donations, and enterprises.
Reports on doctors had the most angles, including interviews with doctors themselves and interviews with their family and friends. Among them were reports of doctors who sacrificed their lives due to being infected with COVID-19, including tributes from their loved ones and the efforts they made in their work.
In reports about doctors, reports about whistleblowers and those who were silenced caused a public outcry. The report "The Person Who Sent SZ" published by the "People" official account on March 10 attracted great public attention. Unfortunately, it was blocked within a few hours of being published, but it continued to "survive" in nearly a hundred variations.
After "The Person Who Sent SZ" was blocked, it started to appear in various versions on social media, such as different language versions, Morse code versions, "cryptic" versions, etc. Regarding this phenomenon, Professor Chang Jiang from the School of Communication at Shenzhen University commented on Weibo, "This is not a carnival, not a joke, and definitely not performance art. This is anger, it is undignified, it is a great shame."
4
Communications and in-depth reports take the lead
From the perspective of the types of reports that "disappeared," communications were the most commonly used style, followed by in-depth reports, with a small number of news briefs, diaries, and data journalism.
These reports often used interviews with individuals to tell stories from their personal experiences, reflecting the urgent issues in various aspects of society hidden in the epidemic. The stories in these reports are often tragedies, with strong subjective emotions and negative sentiments from the interviewees.
In addition, some reports also exposed the mistakes made by relevant departments and the catastrophic consequences of these mistakes. The in-depth report "WH Regret: How Did We Miss the Golden Period of Prevention?" published by China News Weekly on February 5 reflected on WH's missed golden period for epidemic prevention and revealed possible negligence by relevant departments.
5
Reports with a negative emotional bias
From the perspective of the emotional bias of the "disappeared" reports, most of them had a negative emotional bias because they mostly involved negative facts such as faults in government decision-making, the difficult situation of Hubei residents, and the seriousness of the epidemic.
For example, the first report about whistleblower Li Wenliang published by Beijing Youth Daily's official account "Beijing Youth Daily Deep One Degree" on January 27, titled "WH Doctor Under Discipline: Admitted to Isolation Ward After 11 Days, Previous Group Discussion Taken Out of Context," revealed the lack of attention from WH authorities to the situation.
There are a very few reports with a positive emotional bias, but after being published, they sparked public criticism. For example, the report "The People of WH Are the Heroes, and They Are Also People Who Know How to Be Grateful! Wang Zhonglin: Conducting Gratitude Education to Form Strong Positive Energy" published by Changjiang Daily's official account on March 7 was widely understood by the public as a failed propaganda attempt by the WH government.
In addition, there were reports that were deleted due to incomplete data statistics, leading to inaccuracies in the news, such as the report "Just In: Ningbo Zero Cases! All 157 Confirmed Patients Discharged!" published by Ningbo Evening News' official account on March 9.
It is common for media to encounter situations where their articles are deleted, but this situation has "erupted" during this epidemic reporting. The reasons for the "disappearance" of reports may be due to inaccurate information, excessive negative emotions, or other policy reasons.
We cannot deny that some of these "erased" news reports have professional flaws, but the majority of them have extraordinary news value. They have provided us with new dimensions of thinking about the epidemic itself and the deep-seated societal issues revealed by the epidemic.
By uncovering the hidden thorns and accepting the pain in the dark corners of society, the media tears open the truth with limited power and rushes towards the light. Although some reports may disappear briefly today, they will surely have their place in the draft of history.
(Due to technical reasons, certain words in this article have been specially processed. We apologize for any inconvenience.)
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