Why We Fancy Gushing Coverage
2015-12-21
Recently a news coverage has become a viral hit on the Internet that a senior high school student from Hangzhou was admitted to Harvard University. Meanwhile, those coverages unanimously depicted the girl student as smart, diligent but her family condition not good. However, until some people point out that it is far from the truth do we realize her parents both graduate from MIT and she is an ABC either. With the electric news reports often exaggerated or even made up, it is no wonder why some people in our country inevitably question the authenticity of the news.Unfortunately, it is not a unique case, but has its counterparts. As we all know, China's medical scientist Tu Youyou won a share of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine this year. But there are two different versions of Tu's acceptance speech on the Internet, of which one is much more flowery than the other. And of course, the literary version adorned with poetic rhetoric is the fake one. Raymond Zhou has written a commentary on China Daily, and I hereby invoke some of his original words, "China's cyberspace is dotted with the flotsam and jetsam of educational and uplifting quotes, most of which are attributed to luminaries of all kinds, and quite a lot of them are made up."
It seems Chinese netizens really buy into chicken soup like this. For instance, the 20 mottos of Harvard University was once widespread and popular among Chinese, which turned out to be apocryphal in the end. Therefore our media is wont to be gushy rather than rational when it comes to news coverages because the extravagant news appeals to the watchers' eyes and the clicks go up like a petrol pump!
Undoubtedly, these things cater to the superficial spirits of Chinese people in contemporary society. Yet such things are, in truth, deadly serious. Remember, even the glory that some people have, the sumptuous life that some people lead, the valiant efforts, personal striving, for which you, we, can claim no credit. It is safe to say that the imaginary illusion or the tedious chicken soup has nothing to do with individual improvement but puts our society in peril.
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