Chinese television news: a content analysis

This study examined 559 news stories broadcast on the Chinese Central Television evening news program during the latter part of 1985. The units of analysis, individual stories, were coded by subject, geographical dateline, length, and position in the newscast as well as on a seven-point good news-bad news continuum. Coding was done by bilingual Chinese nationals.

The news program's length was found to be quite variable and crowded with butted stories that were considerably shorter than those seen on United States news programs.

The 370 domestic stories were dominated by news concerning industry and economics while the disasters and crime which make up so much of the U.S. news content were almost completely absent. Stories from the nation's capital made up the bulk of the coverage. The affect (emotional content), measured through a Likert scale of the domestic news was significantly better than that of international stories.

The 189 international stories tended to be clustered at the end of the broadcast, to be significantly shorter than domestic stories, and to take up a smaller portion of the news hole than that given to such stories in the United States. The geographic areas covered were surprisingly similar to those which previous studies had found to be covered by U.S. news organizations. The United States was the most common dateline, followed by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.

When the affects for the most commonly cited countries were examined, it was found that reports from Kampuchea were significantly more favorable than the group in general and those from South Africa were significantly worse. The Third World seemed to be seen more favorably than the developed First World.