The lack of strict distinction between news and news reports is one of the important reasons for the confusion of news theory to some extent. I put forward in the Outline of News Ontology [1] that news and news reporting are two different concepts and belong to two different categories. News is a vivid fact that people experience and pay attention to in practice, belonging to the category of social existence; News report is a representation and statement of empirical facts, a report of news, and belongs to the category of social consciousness. As for "news", I have discussed it in detail in the Outline. This paper attempts to further explore news reports and re-examine the authenticity of news (reports) on this basis.

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Li Liangrong distinguished "two definitions of news" in Introduction to Journalism [2], one is "news is the information of recent facts" and the other is "news is the report of recent facts", and correctly pointed out that the former refers to the substantive content of news, while the latter refers to the manifestation of news. But in the following discussion, Li only grasped the unity of content and form, but did not see the opposition and contradiction between them. On the unification of content and form, Li emphasized form over content. So in the end, he not only didn't really distinguish between news and news reports, but also unified the substantive content of news to its form of expression-news reports.

Now I will put aside the task of distinguishing news from news reports for the time being, and first discuss two basic views on the definition of news generally recognized by journalism. They seem like default points in computer languages.

Positions), people hold these views without thinking, so any deviation from these views requires conscious efforts and convincing arguments. First, news can only be information or information, not facts, because facts exist objectively and cannot be moved. For example, we can't move fires or car accidents around, but we can only copy and spread information about them. Second, news must be disseminated, that is, by one person or a group of people to another person or a group of people. Without this kind of communication, it can only be objective facts, not news.

I want to start by attacking these two default points. Look at the first question first. It involves our long-standing basic understanding of "facts". What is the truth? What kind of facts are meaningful in journalism research? Summarize my opinion in "On Outline": (1) Facts are not simple things, but some things have certain attributes or certain relationships, that is, some actual situations of objective things or phenomena. For example, it can't be said that "the sun" is a fact, only that "the sun rises in the east" is a fact; (2) The actual situation of objective things or phenomena is unquestionable objectivity and does not depend on anyone's subjective will. In this sense, we must admit the existence of "comfortable facts"; (3) But for human society, "comfortable facts" are useless except as an infinite source of people's continuous experience and understanding in practical activities. The facts studied by general humanities and social sciences (except philosophy), including journalism, can only be those that meet people and are perceived in social practice, that is, "empirical facts".

Now let's look at "empirical facts". On the one hand, "empirical fact" is the presentation of the attributes or relationships of objective things to people, on the other hand, it is people's grasp and judgment of these attributes and relationships. The former is the foundation and the latter is the condition, and both are indispensable. Therefore, the facts studied by journalism are not only the "thing in itself" or "state in itself" independent of people's consciousness, but the perceptual presentation of the actual situation of objective things accepted by the concept and judged by the subject, the perceived "thing in itself" or "state in itself" and the "thing in itself" or "state in itself" in knowledge and experience. At this point, the fact is no longer the natural history of its own development or the sum of some physical and chemical properties and relationships. It is not a state that can only be spread through the projection of certain energy and quality, but a perceptual knowledge that can be judged through propositions and expressed and spread through statements. The spreadability of perceptual knowledge is self-evident. If our analysis can be established, then the view that facts cannot be copied and disseminated is wrong, and the concept of "information" introduced for this purpose is redundant. In fact, almost all scholars who define news with "information" will further define information with "facts", and they all admit that news is not general information, but "information about facts" because the concept of information is too broad and vague. Instead, why not define news directly with "facts"? According to our analysis and understanding, "information about facts" is actually "facts". Besides, I really can't imagine what else it can be.

It is said that the introduction of the concept of "information" has a "great theoretical significance", that is, it clarifies the relationship between news and propaganda, and makes people realize that the content of news is information, while the content of propaganda is opinion (isn't opinion also information? )。 However, in our view, it is not necessary to introduce the concept of "information" to clarify the relationship between news and propaganda, but only to make it clear that news is a vivid fact that people experience and pay attention to in practice. Tens of millions of years of social practice have provided people with a basic form of understanding of the external objective world. These background conditions, called "transcendental form" by some philosophers, determine that people's cognition of "empirical facts" is basically the same. It is within this understanding that we say "facts speak louder than words". News is an empirical fact, and the identity of all members of society is basically the same; News report is a statement of experience and facts by a specific reporter (individual or organization) beyond the above basic understanding.

In addition to the form, it also includes the reporter's own special "cognitive form". It can be said that most news reports are condensed with the thoughts and opinions of the reporters. Therefore, regardless of the political origin of China's social reality, the theoretical origin of equating news with propaganda lies in equating news with news reports, rather than the lack of an introduction of the concept of "information". Scholars who first put forward this concept also have an idea, that is, trying to find a method or even a formula to calculate the amount of news information, but more than 20 years of practice show that such efforts are futile.

In addition, we also agree with Yu Siyong's query on the definition of information news: First, as a general scientific concept, information has not been recognized so far, because academic views are still inconsistent, and there are as many as 39 definitions of "information" published internationally. What is even more ridiculous is that when the Oxford Dictionary explains "information", it says that "information is talking about things, news and knowledge"; Webster's dictionary also believes that "information is data, news and knowledge obtained during observation or research". So tossing and turning, borrowing from each other, the more you explain, the more confused you are. Second, use information to reveal the nature of news phenomena. What is the nature of information itself? Is it material or conscious? Even Weiner, the founder of information theory, couldn't say clearly: "What is information? Information is neither spiritual nor material. " In this case, using "information" to define "news" is at least unscientific and not serious. Thirdly, according to the definition rule that "the defined item cannot directly or indirectly contain the defined item" in general logic, using "information" to define "news" is equivalent to making a logical error of "circular definition". [3]

Now let's look at the second question. Is the objective fact that no one reports and spreads news? Gan Xifen said: "Just because there are facts and the latest important events somewhere doesn't mean there is news. If a major natural phenomenon changes in a remote and uninhabited area and is unknown, no one knows and no one spreads it, even if it is unknown, it does not constitute a kind of news. " [4] This is probably the earliest academic statement that there is no news without communication after the founding of the People's Republic of China. At first glance, this statement makes sense. But a little scrutiny will reveal a question: Is the "fact" here a "comfortable fact" or an "empirical fact"? From "obscurity, no one knows", it seems to be the former; Judging from the fact that this change is "latest", "important" and "remarkable", it is obviously the latter. If it is the former, as we said before, it should not be a fact discussed in journalism; If it is the latter, we think it can't be "unknown" because it has already appeared in front of people and been heard by people. For those who see and hear, this is news. We believe that the fresh facts experienced by a person or a group of people personally or directly are news to this person or a group of people. For the first time in A Dream of Red Mansions, Zhen cracked the "good song" written by a lame Taoist, grabbed the wallet from the Taoist's shoulder and carried it on his back. Instead of going home, he drifted with the crazy Taoist priest. This incident (which we assume is true) "is now sensational in the neighborhood, and everyone regards it as a news legend." In logical order, there is "news" first, and then there is "legend" about it.

The facts witnessed or experienced by neighbors are news, and the "legend" of facts is news reports. The reason seems simple: the so-called news reporting and news dissemination means that news exists before news reporting and dissemination; The so-called news interview and news writing are the same. From the genetic point of view, news must be the first, and reporting and communication are the last. A fact of human experience, as long as it has news value, it is still news if it is not reported or spread. Reporting and communication are the premise of news communication, but they are not the premise of news birth. Imagine what we reported and spread without getting the news in advance. At first, human ancestors knew the objective things around them mainly through direct experience. It is the result of evolution, a symbol of civilization, and self-acquisition through the experience of others, and news communication is an integral part of this result and symbol. Based on the above understanding, we insist that news is a vivid fact that people experience and pay attention to in social practice from the perspective of ontology. Moreover, the experience here is first and foremost a direct experience. If we must use communicative terms, it belongs to people's "interpersonal communication."

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Man is an animal that can gain self from other people's experiences. Even in a relatively small society, not every member of society can directly experience all kinds of natural and social events that he wants to know or should know. This requires indirect experience, that is, learning from others' experience. Any event or phenomenon has a certain time-space boundary and scope, and people in different time-space scopes have to rely on indirect experience to understand these events or phenomena. This is an important reason for the existence of news reports and news dissemination. The larger the society, the greater the demand for indirect experience, so that today's society has to entrust specialized personnel and set up specialized institutions to do this work.

Indirect experience can only be presented and spread through certain symbolic forms, and the most exquisite symbolic form is language. News reports are statements of "empirical facts". Because this statement has a corresponding perceptual presentation object, that is, the sensory image produced and formed by the object stimulating our sensory organs, it must be a true and false statement, that is, a proposition, so news reports are composed of propositions. It can be said that news is the content stated and affirmed for proposition, and news report is the expression form of news. The two are both unified and opposite, both consistent and not one-to-one correspondence. We can neither separate them nor confuse them regardless of their main essential differences.

Saying that news is stated and affirmed by propositions does not mean that all propositional forms are suitable for stating news content. In fact, only some propositions can become the basic expression of news. In the article On Different Logic published by Jin in 194 1, propositions are divided into three types: special propositions, universal propositions (Peng Yilian thinks this seems to be a misprint of "ordinary propositions") and universal propositions. Special propositions determine special facts, such as "Jia Qinglin was elected chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at a meeting of the 10th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference" and "a man broke into the Beijing Branch of Reuters with suspicious explosives". The popular proposition or common proposition determines the common situation of a time and a place, which is used to express and affirm "historical summary", that is, "the combination of special facts in history", such as "people in the Qing Dynasty have braids" and "all the girls in this class have put on makeup today". Common propositions all assert the truth, such as "the distance between two parallel lines is equal everywhere" and "people must eat to survive". [5] The first proposition is used to determine a special fact, which appears in the form of a special statement or a single statement, so it is called a special proposition. The third proposition asserts universal truths (including theories, viewpoints, general norms, etc.). ) and appear in the form of full-name statements, so it is called a pan-proposition. The difference between the two is obvious. The second proposition, the common proposition, is somewhat complicated and needs specific analysis. Ordinary propositions are different from universal propositions. First of all, the content expressed by the universal proposition transcends the specific time and space, for example, "people must eat to survive" is not limited by special time and space conditions; However, ordinary propositions are limited by special time and space conditions and do not have universality beyond time and space. Only express a general situation in a certain period and within a certain range, such as "all the girls in this class are wearing makeup today", and it is limited to "today" and "this class". Secondly, the universal proposition is universal and analogical, so it may be overthrown by more general and analogical propositions in the future, such as the "geocentric theory" overthrown by Heliocentrism; Ordinary proposition is a "historical summary" under specific time and space conditions. If this summary conforms to the reality at that time, there is no question of being overthrown by future propositions. If it is true that "all the girls in this class are wearing makeup today", then whether the girls in this class wear makeup tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, this proposition cannot be refuted. Third, the universal proposition requires a universal factual basis, which can be repeatedly confirmed through experiments and observations; Ordinary propositions are only based on facts under specific time and space conditions, and any verification beyond this condition is meaningless. Thus, although general propositions also have the form of full-name statements, they are not universal propositions.

So what is the difference between ordinary propositions and special propositions? Can they also state an empirical fact like a special proposition? Because ordinary propositions adopt the form of full-name statements, they are not special empirical facts. In this way, this proposition is not only different from the general proposition that expresses the general theory, but also different from the special proposition that expresses the specific facts. Jin thinks it is "a proposition between universality and particularity". As far as the relationship with the facts is concerned, "this proposition seems to be closer to the facts than the universal proposition". [6] But what is relevant to our thesis is whether these propositions affirm the facts, and if so, what kind of facts are they? For this problem, we agree with Peng Yilian's analysis in On Facts: there are two kinds of common propositions. One is that the subject represents a wide range of objects, so that the observer cannot directly obtain all the contents he wants to judge through perceptual experience. For a specific observer, it is impossible to determine it by directly observing the A Qing dynasty. No specific observer can guarantee that it confirms one special fact after another, that is, it can't prove that everyone in the Qing Dynasty has braids, so this universal proposition "neither represents a universal fact nor affirms a special fact".

[7] The other is that the range of objects represented by the main item is narrow, and a specific observer can directly obtain all the contents he wants through perceptual experience, such as "all the girls in this class are wearing makeup", and an observer with normal ability can completely conclude and confirm that every girl in this class is wearing makeup. Although this kind of proposition does not induce a special empirical fact like a special proposition, it can generalize and determine all the facts in a certain time and space, that is, in a narrow time and space. For the convenience of narration, we call the former a "generalized general proposition" and the latter a "narrow general proposition".

Through the analysis of the above propositions, it is not difficult to draw a conclusion that news, as an "empirical fact", can only be stated in special propositions and narrow general propositions. Because the full name statement of narrow general propositions is limited by specific time and space, its time and space scope is very limited, so we have reason to regard it as a combination of special propositions in a limited range. Therefore, we think that the basic statement form of news is a special proposition. Of course, this special proposition must be consistent with the perceptual presentation of objective things, that is, it must be true. At this point, we can draw a conclusion: news is the content stated by the true special proposition, and news report is the true special proposition and the statement form composed of such propositions. In a specific news report, only the content stated in a really special proposition is news content, otherwise it is not news content no matter how fresh and important it is.

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The relationship between news report and news can generally be understood as the relationship between form and content, which are both unified and opposite; They are both exterior and interior, and they are not one-to-one correspondence. It is wrong to separate them, and it is also wrong to confuse them indiscriminately.

Theoretically, there are four main differences between news and news reports:

First of all, news belongs to the category of social existence, and news reports belong to the category of social consciousness. According to the previous discussion, news comes from empirical facts, which come from "comfortable facts"; News report is the result of sorting out, processing and presenting some empirical facts by the human brain, which belongs to another link. As shown in the figure:

Among the three ellipses on the left, the outermost circle represents "free facts", the middle layer represents "empirical facts" and the innermost layer represents "news facts" (news in the ontological sense); Journalists only select a part of news facts, consciously sort out, process and express them, and materialize them into news reports through appropriate symbolic forms. The small ellipse on the right represents specific news reports, and the big circle represents abstract news reports, that is, the sum of all specific news reports. Of course, there are always some problems in using concrete graphics to express abstract ideas. As mentioned above, "comfortable facts" are actually infinite, not limited, while "empirical facts" are constantly expanding and dynamic. But the picture at least clearly shows that news and news reports belong to two different links, the former belongs to the category of social existence and the latter belongs to the category of social consciousness.

Secondly, the same content has different forms of expression, and correspondingly, the same news can have different news reports. This problem has long been pointed out by scholars. More than 20 years ago, Gan Xifen listed the different reports of Xinhua News Agency and Associated Press on the liberation of Beiping. However, almost all scholars talk about this issue from the relationship between "facts" and "news" rather than from the relationship between news and news reports. In their view, the reason for this problem is that different journalists have different choices and judgments on "facts". According to our point of view, news is a vivid fact that people experience and pay attention to in social practice, and news reports are statements of real special propositions. In short, news is a fact, and news reports are statements of propositions. The same news can have different news reports, which is rooted in the fact that the same facts can be stated in different propositions. When discussing this issue, Jin cited an example: "The tree is in front of the temple" and "The temple is behind the tree" are not only two sentences, but also two propositions, but these two propositions judge only one fact. [8] There seems to be no different choice and judgment of facts here. "The tree is in front of the temple" and "the temple is behind the tree" both choose and judge the same fact. That is to say, the ontological source of different news reports for the same news is not that journalists have different positions and viewpoints, but that news itself, as an "empirical fact", is the unity of directness and indirectness, subjectivity and objectivity. As far as the objective situation of things is presented to people in its own form, it has objectivity independent of human will; As far as the objective situation of things is concerned, it has a certain subjective nature. As the "empirical fact" of news, the unity of opposites between objectivity and subjectivity is embodied in the unity of opposites between facts and propositions, that is, propositions reflect facts, but they are different from facts. Facts reflect the objective content of "empirical facts" and propositions reflect the subjective form of "empirical facts". Subjective forms can be divided into universality and particularity. As a universal cognitive form, it is formed in hundreds of millions of years of social practice, accepted and recognized by every cognitive subject, and has the attribute of social existence. The authenticity and objectivity of news reports are based on this universal cognitive form. However, the special cognitive form is restricted by the specific cognitive subject's own conditions, which may vary widely. The subjectivity, tendentiousness and some unintentional inaccuracies of news reports are all related to this.

Thirdly, the content is not true or false, but the form of the content is true or false. Accordingly, news reports are true or false, but news doesn't matter. News is a fresh fact that people experience and pay attention to in social practice. Facts can only exist, or exist in the past, or exist in the present, and there can be no "facts" that do not exist in the past and now; From the perspective of experience, people's grasp of facts is a direct grasp of perceptual experience, that is, to experience facts intuitively through sensibility. This perceptual intuition has the same biological basis as human beings, and also has the same cultural basis formed by hundreds of millions of years of practice. It is on the same basis that we regard the light refracted by the sun from an object as "red", the movement of a mass object leaving the earth's surface as "flight", and the sound exceeding a certain decibel as "noise" and so on. Therefore, perceptual intuitive experience is basically the same for normal social members, which is why "empirical facts" are possible. News reports are composed of propositions, and propositions are always true and false, otherwise they are not propositions. It can be seen that the so-called "news authenticity" is actually a pseudo category. News doesn't matter if it's true or false. Fake is not news. What is true and false is news reports. The so-called "fake news" is actually a fake news report.

Finally, news reports have the subjective feelings of reporters, which are not found in news. As an empirical fact, news is the direct acceptance and grasp of objective facts by human sensory organs, and subjective factors such as people's emotions and values are almost powerless in this process. The so-called "must face the facts" is precisely this truth. However, when the empirical facts become the subject's "object consciousness" as a result, the subject's "self-consciousness" begins to entangle this "object consciousness" and even interfere with it. News report is a statement of experience and facts by the subject of the report, which is permeated with the subjective consciousness of the narrator.