Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The article compares CCTV (China Central Television)’s video report of “Fidel Castro’s death” with “Nelson Mandara’s death”, analyzing CCTV’s two pairs of factors such as the number of reports, frequency, content, and foreign media overlap, studying CCTV’s reporting characteristics to two famous international politicians and the reporting logic behind it. Looking back at the report on the death of Mandela, there are several problems: the homogenization of the report, over-sized, the follow-up of foreign media, lopsided, lack of a “national position”. Observing reports on the death of Castro, the situation is very different. The number of reports is obviously less and more simple. There is little report on Castro’s merits. This issue reflects the dilemma of Chinese official media in cross-cultural communication. The article analyses data and content of these two news reports of CCTV, and interprets the reasons behind the differences. China’s international cross-cultural communication still lacks its national position - and its international news reporting capability is still relatively weak. It is necessary to improve Chinese official media’s communication capabilities.