Media should gain its trust by providing objective and true news. Otherwise it will lose trust from the public and cause unnecessary waste of social resources. This is an opinion published on the Chinese version of People's Daily Online.

The story behind was about the recent hot discussion on a story titled "Confucius is no better than Zhang Ziyi". Most people know Confucius is a great educator and a sage in ancient China and whose thought guided Chinese people and even many people outside China for over two thousand years while Zhang Ziyi is the current most popular film star who is especially recognized outside China. How can these two people be compared? Surprisingly enough, in a magazine New Weekly, the reporter did put the two together and quoted Professor Zhang Yiwu from Peking University saying it was he who said this. Immediately Professor Zhang became the target of attacks from many netizens and readers. Many of them are very angry about his remark. However, Professor Zhang denied the quote in his blog saying he has never made such remark and he didn't know that after the interview, the title of the story became "how to ��smuggle' Chinese culture".

And if one reads Zhang's article carefully, one can feel that he indeed didn't mean to compare the two. The two persons can be seen as a cultural symbol but their roles are different and they can't deny one another.

But the problem is that the journalist didn't understand the real meaning of the interviewee. In order to attract readers'eyes, the reporter even changed what the professor said, or just quote part of the sentence and cut off the context. The story sounds ridiculous for many people.

It indeed attracted many readers and many critiques. Many websites also published the story. So the discussion became hot for a few days. But it was the reporter who put these two figures together purposely.

It is worth noting that currently in media circle such sensational and even untrue news is not alone. One often sees some media report one hot news, but the next day someone will come out to deny it to say it is not true. False news seem to be rampant in some media. The purpose is just to attract more people to read it or more people to read it online. But it is actually very misleading. This will lead to two consequences: one is that the public don't trust media any more. The other is that media needs more regulations to force it to implement its social responsibilities.

Thus if media wants to get trust and independent, it needs to be self-regulated and committed to its own social responsibilities by reporting objectively. And if the news is not true, it will bring very negative impact to the society in the long run.

By People's Daily Online