China is one of the earliest countries in the world with developed culture, and newspapers have a history of at least more than 1,000 years from their birth to the present. Prior to the emergence of newspapers, there were activities to disseminate news by language or letters.
First, there is news dissemination in human beings
About 1.7 million years ago, there were ancient human activities in our country. These primitive humans lived in harsh environments, and their personal strength was not enough to withstand the attacks of beasts of prey, and in order to survive, they needed to exchange ideas, spread news, and coordinate their actions. For example, if you find a beast, call your partner to come hunting or take shelter in time. As a result, language and news dissemination gradually arose in the common practice of labor life. Therefore, it can be said that the origin of news is the fact that human beings occur in natural struggles and social struggles, and there is news dissemination for human beings.
Primitive society had no writing, and the news that occurred in society could only be transmitted from two aspects through oral transmission: one was the horizontal aspect, one passed on to ten, ten hundred, and spread in all directions; the second was the vertical aspect, and the generation by word of mouth was passed on from generation to generation. For example, there are the Chao clan who invented the "building wood for the nest"; the Furen clan drilled wood for fire and learned to cook food; the Fuxi clan taught people to tie nets to catch animals and domesticate livestock; the Shennong clan tasted hundreds of herbs and invented medicine; and the Yellow Emperor defeated Xuan You, Dayu to control the flood, and Yao, Shun, and Yu implemented the "Zen concession system", and so on. Although their authenticity has yet to be studied, these oral transmissions undoubtedly convey to us the extremely precious early information of the ancestors of the Chinese nation.
Second, the dissemination and collection of news in ancient times
Ancient texts have said that the governments of Yao and Shunshi set up "jin shan" and "slander trees" next to the main road. Jingjing is an ancient flag decorated with five-colored feathers on the top of the flagpole. The so-called "jing of goodness" is to put up a banner and let people put forward suggestions to the government to improve their work there. The "Wood of Slander" is a wooden plaque erected next to the road where people can criticize the government. This can be regarded as a form of news dissemination in ancient times.
Later, when China's Chinese characters were basically mature, news dissemination developed further. Qin Lizhai, the early chief writer of the "Declaration", in his "Small History of the Evolution of Chinese Newspapers" written in 1922, believed that as early as the Shang Zhou, China already had the bud of journalism. At that time, he said that "the government had set up a full-time official, and in the spring and autumn, he went out to tour the countries, collected customs and customs, and returned to the history of the emperors." "In general, the ancient poems, Chinese, and national policies handed down today are the results of the news dissemination at that time. Many other scholars in China who study the history of journalism also agree with this view, believing that "collecting poetry" and "collecting style" are ancient interview activities.
Opening China's earliest poetry collection, the Book of Poetry, many folk songs vividly reflect the new ideas and new things in the period of China's transition from slave society to feudal society, which can also prove this.
Was Confucius the first journalist in China?
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, China began to enter a class society. At that time, the economy was prosperous, the culture was developed, and the competition for supremacy also promoted the development of news dissemination. The main manifestations are: First, from general oral communication to emphasis on written communication; second, from free communication of the people to organized and led by the government to send people to collect.
At that time, the government had a taishi, an internal history, a foreign history, a small history, and a royal history. Some of these historians served around the emperor to record their speeches, and some participated in various meetings of the country's politics, economy, military, and diplomacy, collecting news, and promptly publishing or keeping the results of their interviews in historical archives.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius, the founder of the Confucian school, once made a deletion and correction to the Chronicle of the State of Lu, "Spring and Autumn". Although this history book only records an outline or summary of the major events of the Lu kingdom, it is very detailed, but it has a clear time record, so it was once revered as the prototype of China's ancient newspapers. When Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty implemented the new law, he once contemptuously criticized the Spring and Autumn Period, saying: "This is a broken dynasty newspaper." Some people therefore call "Spring and Autumn" china's earliest government gazette ("Chaobao"), and even think that China's ancient newspapers started from "Spring and Autumn", Confucius was China's first journalist and so on. This is a lack of scientific basis.
The "Spring and Autumn" revised by Confucius is a chronology of the broken dynasty compiled by the historian of the State of Lu, mainly according to the historical chronology, which is an archival document, which was not published or published publicly at that time, and it has a different nature and task from the newspaper, and cannot be called an ancient newspaper.
However, some history books preserve a large number of valuable historical materials for news dissemination, which are worth studying and referring to today's journalists. For example, the "Zuo Zhuan", which uses historical facts to explain the "Spring and Autumn", not only describes the intricate political struggles between the princely states in the Spring and Autumn Period, records the achievements of China's ancient observation of comets, solar eclipses, and other natural sciences, but also praises some of the righteous and beautiful deeds of Dong Hu, who were not afraid of violence and wrote straight books, and set a good example for future generations of journalists and historians. "Left Biography" is worthy of our direct study.
4. The relationship between official correspondence and newspapers
After Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty, he inherited the Qin system and implemented centralized power, but he also divided many princes and princes, and let each prince set up a residence (that is, an office in Beijing), which prompted a new development in news dissemination. According to the "Western Han Dynasty Huijiao", one of the nine secretaries of the Han Dynasty, the great official Dahongxu, had a subordinate official county residence. The main task of this subordinate official was to disseminate edicts, chapters, and the like for the residences of the princes and princes in Beijing at that time, so that they could promptly inform the hou or the feudal town of the news.
During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the territory was expanded, the postal station was smooth, and the scope of news dissemination was further expanded. In the past, Ge Gongzhen, a well-known expert in the history of journalism in China, said: "All edicts and chapters are copied in the mansion to repay the princes, which is called the "Di Bao". Later, some people believed that the Han Dynasty already had a newspaper. However, from the time Ge Gongzhen raised this question to the present, the Han Dynasty Di Bao has not been found, and even the Han Dynasty literature has never had a direct record of the Di Bao, so many people who study the history of China's newspapers and periodicals have a negative attitude towards this.
Moreover, the "all edicts and chapters" sent from the residence to the people were only confidential letters reported by the officials to the princes (clan towns), unlike those that could be published publicly and were needed by ordinary officials and intellectuals. If we call all the newspapers of the officials of the residence as ancient newspapers, then, as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty before the Han Dynasty, the system of the residence was established, and the officials of the residence at that time must also report news to their superiors. Obviously, newspapers and official letters cannot be equated.
However, there is a close relationship between official letters and newspapers. According to the literature, during the Qin and Han dynasties in China, the imperial court had established a system of recording political affairs on a daily and monthly basis. "In the monthly calendar of Shuo and Taishi, there is a Si Shilang Shangshu who reads his orders and pursues his government" (Book of the Later Han Dynasty).
The ministries and governments of the Han and Tang dynasties also had various monthly reporting materials, with the name "Recorded newspaper". Although such a record has a message, it is actually a record of various proceedings, a report on requests for instructions and various forms, and is kept only as an archive. It is still not a newspaper, but a form of news dissemination that is closer to newspapers before the production of di bao and di banknotes.
During the Western Han Dynasty, the production of ancient newspapers was not far away
When the Western Han Dynasty mourned the emperor, the Great Sikong Shidan proposed to reform the currency and drafted a copy of the recital. Unexpectedly, the writer copied one more copy and passed it out, which was widely circulated and made public opinion in Kyoto boil. When Emperor Wu learned of this, he was very annoyed and dismissed Shi Dan from his post.
Some people asked, can the copy of the recital be called a banknote? I don't think so. Because it has not yet possessed some of the characteristics of forming a newspaper, such as using a unified name and unified content, and publishing it successively according to time. Of course, although the copy of the recital is not a banknote, we can see from this story that during the Western Han Dynasty, people had paid attention to copying the news, the feudal dynasty also attached importance to the control of news, and the emergence of ancient Chinese newspapers was not far away.
News communication is the precursor of newspapers, and newspapers are the inevitable products of the development of news communication to a certain stage. The means of news dissemination were continuously improved with the development of social, political and economic development, and it went through the stages of oral transmission and written transmission (JianMu, letters, official literary newspapers), etc., until the Tang Dynasty gradually evolved into the newspaper "Di Bao". Naturally, this is only a rough division, and in the actual life after the production of newspapers, oral transmission and the transmission of words such as jane, letters, and official newspapers still exist.