Bai Yansong (Nong Jian/Photo)
Bai Yansong took two pictures with his mobile phone and showed them to Southern Weekend reporters.
"What I said in the show for less than a minute turned into hundreds of words with them, and they were all double quotation marks. I almost cried with laughter." On December 9, 2023, Bai Yansong was in the show Comment on the "12·2 Nanchang 220 million lottery incident". Some self-media articles have been added to the content and spread a lot.
In addition to amusing these imaginary and fabricated remarks, Bai Yansong thought more, "Our mainstream media must enhance its communication capabilities, pay attention to what ordinary people should pay attention to, and move forward in accordance with journalistic professionalism. If we are aphasic and absent, the facts (Possibly) Increasingly untrue."
"Bai Shuo" is considered a trustworthy voice that represents the mainstream media. But when there is a disagreement, this voice will become the reason for some people to hate Bai Yansong. When someone scolded him, Bai Yansong said, "Okay, I stand with the person who scolded me."
In 2023, the "Journalism Debate" became a hot topic. When entering graduate school, students are confused and asked Bai Yansong what the future of media is. Bai Yansong asked, can you be sure which major you study now will have a better tomorrow? Still the familiar Bai style answer.
In 1989, when Bai Yansong graduated, his work had not been finalized and he was about to leave for the south. After working at China Broadcasting News for four years, he received a call from Cui Yongyuan. Xiaobai, the TV station is going to launch a new program and is very short of people. Can you go over and help me? Launched in 1993 as "Eastern Time and Space," this TV news program pioneered TV reform. Together with his colleagues and comrades who called him Xiaobai, he was the first to board the ship bound for the new century, making live television news the norm.
When Bai Yansong was 30 years old, he cut off everything he could and no longer served as a producer. In the end, only news was left. "I am also one of the vested interests," Bai Yansong said. "We promoted the last round of TV reform and became the beneficiary of that reform." Later, Bai Yansong founded "News 1+1".
Lao Bai, that's what people call him now. When he was 40 years old, Lao Bai wrote 12 words in "Southern Weekend": "Defend common sense, build reason, and find faith." Now 55 years old, he said that a newspaper is like a person's life, not every day of his life. They are all stronger than before, and there must be a curve along the way.
Bai Yansong makes news and becomes part of the news himself. On December 11, Bai Yansong accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from Southern Weekend.
Media literacy has become standard for all people and professions
Southern Weekend: One of the hot words on the short video platform in 2023 is "The Debate of Journalism Majors", which is derived from Zhang Xuefeng's sentence "If my child enrolls in the journalism department, I'm going to knock him out." What do you think about this? What percentage of the students you teach stay in the journalism industry?
Bai Yansong: There is never a profession that is said to be dead by others, but it may be killed by oneself. People who really want to do journalism will not be affected by such language. I don't judge him and I don't care. What I care about is how journalism should be done. People have badmouthed countless industries, but don’t many of them still exist? No one can say that a business will never die.
My graduate students have graduated 10 times, more than 110 of them, and most of them are working in media. I even kicked them in the first few issues, hoping that they would go to new media, but a large proportion of them were in traditional media. Of course, things have changed a lot now, because of the pressure of employment. I also agree that before survival, dignity and love, you must choose survival first, but everything is fine.
I had dinner with the school leaders, junior fellow students, and teachers from Communication University the day before yesterday. In fact, I have been talking about one bad news and one good news. The bad news is that the surface has been amplified by everyone, and now I see that the news seems to be shrinking. But the good news is that dissemination is expanding. Which industry dares not to disseminate it? I also clearly feel that in the past few years, the proportion of news media students was very high, but now it is shrinking, but the number of people from all walks of life who want to recruit media students is increasing.From the perspective of news itself, you may regard it as bad news, but from the perspective of communication, it is good news, and the whole society is paying attention to it.
Now I often joke that if a person is not media literate, he cannot even post on Moments. How can he put nine photos together? Where did the title come from? How to write these two hundred words? Media literacy has become standard for everyone and every profession. Do you take this as bad news or good news?
Southern Weekend: The spread of is expanding, but the communication power of some media is also weakening.
Bai Yansong: Many years ago, I attended a symposium and the title of my speech was "Using storytelling to communicate well." Not long after the beginning of the article, I raised a question: How should we understand the mainstream media in the new era? I said that in the past, we understood two meanings of mainstream media: the first is the revolutionary media that has followed our party all the way, and the second is the media that spreads mainstream values. But now I think we need to add a third one, which has mainstream influence in the public opinion field. If you have been with the party all the way and spread mainstream values, but are marginalized in the field of public opinion, can you still be called a mainstream media?
We cannot hide our ears and steal the news. The real anxiety of the media now is two things. The first thing is, do you have mainstream influence? Second, there are too many media outlets. For example, radio and television were established as four-level stations in the mid-1980s. At their peak, there were more than 3,000 media outlets, and now there are 2,000 to 3,000 outlets.
Even when television was at its most glorious in the past, not as many people paid attention to news and media as they do now. People often take photos and say that no one in the waiting room is reading, but everyone is looking at their mobile phones. I said that I wanted to take a picture of the waiting room from thirty years ago, but I found that no one was reading or taking a nap. Instead of taking a nap, I am more happy to see them looking at their mobile phones now, at least starting to have a lot of information. But the biggest problem in this process now is that people who should have read more books don't read them much. People who listen to music are reading books, reading texts, and listening to music. But unfortunately, people who should read more now don't read much.
mobile phone is the first personal media in human history. The biggest challenge has arisen. You can no longer ask him to see what he wants to see. You can no longer emphasize the starting point. You can only improve your attractiveness, charm and temptation and let him choose. you. The most important thing in communication is to arrive rather than set off. If you can't arrive, you've done nothing. Why does
propose storytelling? That is, in the face of new changes, only by telling stories can the truth behind them be spread. If you don't have the ability in this area, you will be speechless in many places and pretend not to see the hot spots that people are concerned about. The more hot topics there are, the more important it is for our mainstream media and traditional media to do this, because they will disseminate more accurate facts and more accurate values, and only then can they better play the role that the media should play.
"You stand together with this era"
Southern Weekend: You have hosted so many programs, which program do you think has finally satisfied your news expectations?
Bai Yansong: No program can satisfy you forever in the long term. For example, let’s not talk about the past “Eastern Time and Space”. In the past twenty years, “News 1+1” was during the epidemic, “News 1+1” was during the earthquake, and “News 1+1” was when it was first founded. Just like during the epidemic, from January 20, 2020, when Academician Zhong Nanshan confirmed the existence of human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus in our live broadcast, to the live broadcast in April when Wuhan was unblocked, I continued to do live broadcasts for several months. Many of the core information experts are in our program. Including Wang Chen, Li Lanjuan, the editor-in-chief of "The Lancet", Bill Gates, Jack Ma, etc., many people speak in "News 1+1".
Later, I said something like this to my young colleagues in the industry. Those of you who have worked in journalism all your life, and have been doing this for a period of time, you stand with this era, answer many questions, and ask many questions, even if you resign now, Your waist will be hard all your life.
Southern Weekend: Regarding the various uncertainties in major news, what are your selection criteria?
Bai Yansong: A reporter asked me more than ten years ago, when you do news, do you think about the leaders or the people? I said, I don’t want anyone. He was surprised, how can you do news without anyone thinking about it? I said, all I want to do is what to do with this news. Some college students in the university asked me, Mr. Bai, how to do news? I said, I don’t know, I just know what to do with this news. How to do news is just like how to shoot a movie. Even a good director can’t answer it. But how to shoot this movie? He will have the answer after thinking about it.
I often tell many colleagues that a large proportion of our responsibility is to record what is happening in the world based on facts, extract it, and tell the audience. Once when I was asked to give my acceptance speech when I won an award, I just said one sentence, "Be like a monk ringing the bell every day." First of all, the clock has to be struck at one o'clock, and secondly, it is not only to win the trust of myself, but also to win the trust of others. Do you feel negative? I think everyone has a very positive idea of hitting the clock every day as a monk, which is good.
has been a host for thirty years. I wrote all the hosting words myself and almost never read other people’s essays, so just scold me for what is wrong and what is wrong. I really can’t blame others. It is broadcast on the CCTV platform. Because many links are together, I think everyone understands it as the voice of CCTV, or sometimes CCTV’s views on a matter are different in different columns, but it is exactly the same. It represents different perspectives, which I think is quite reasonable. Let’s go back to that sentence, follow the rules of news and follow the facts. This is the most important thing.
What to do if young people don’t trust
Southern Weekend: Bai Yansong is considered by many to be a symbol representing mainstream voices and is widely trusted. How do you evaluate this?
Bai Yansong: Since you have received a lot of unrealistic praise, you will also receive a lot of unrealistic criticism. With your back against a big tree, you might think you are a big tree, but others will symbolize you in various ways. The trust you just mentioned, I think this word may not be the right one. Now people often run against you. What have you done? And so on. I know what you do, I know what I do every day, and I know what I have done in the past. But now people are criticizing you, criticizing you for certain things, etc. If you live with your mouth, naturally you will also Live in other people's mouths.
Just because I took a certain sentence out of context and said that you don't understand today's young people at all, I am happy. In 2010 I wrote the book "Are You Happy?" 》The preface uses a page and a half to describe that housing prices, the workplace, and marriage will be the three new big problems that young people will encounter in the future. If these problems are not solved in the future, they will not only be social problems, but I am afraid they will become more serious. Many people are confused, right? What’s amazing is that many years later, some netizens took one of your words and said that you don’t understand young people. But where did I say it? I said it in a non-famous school in Lanzhou. The only thing I got was two bowls of beef noodles. From being a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to paying attention to non-prestigious schools for so many years, isn't it because you have seen the difficulties faced by today's young people?
What's more, now that someone is talking, some people are looking from the left, some are looking from the middle, and some are looking from the right. People often say that Bai Yansong has changed and is not like before. I said, wrong, precisely because I have not changed. In the past, when you stood on the right, you felt that I was too far away from you. Now another group of people are standing here, pointing to me from the left, and you don't rely on us. I always think you have to walk in the middle and you have to do what the news does.
Southern Weekend: Some young people criticize that now you have become a vested interest and no longer stand with them.
Bai Yansong: When was close to ten years ago, I proposed what kind of vested interests we should be. I said that vested interests should serve young people. Who are we leaving messages on the Internet now? Suddenly you become a saint while reporting, and he comments, "Lao Bai is awesome," and then he turns around and thinks you're an asshole on the news. Who told you to live in other people's mouths?
still needs to speak for young people.I have always said that our generation is lucky. I encountered the song "Tomorrow Will Be Better" when I was 18 years old, and we believe that tomorrow will be better. Even through a lot of hardships, it was good. A considerable challenge now is how society as a whole can make young people believe that tomorrow will be better and that it can be achieved. Of course, we are still on the side of young people. This guy praised you yesterday, criticized you today, and praised you again two days later. It depends on your mood, but the important thing is that you know what you have been doing.
Southern Weekend: Do you think the gap between the media and the audience is deeper?
Bai Yansong: In the past, the articles you published were just to interact with the people you like, which is of course very harmonious. Now you don’t know how the things you post will be cut into, all kinds of fragments, and you have to communicate with many people who don’t agree with you and are not of the same group, so it’s very complicated and you have to face everything.
Think about the past, you had a relationship with your subscriber, why did he subscribe to you? If someone who likes you makes a reservation, they will naturally have a good interaction with you. Is this the case now? Now people who like or dislike you may see your information, and they don’t pay much attention to where it comes from, so they have different attitudes. You still insist on your original opinion, but people from all over the world, after reading one sentence, they have already expressed their emotions, withdrawn, and went to do other things. If you take this seriously, you will feel sad for a long time.
No matter how dazzling many industries are, I am not suitable for it.
Southern Weekend: Recently, you conducted an exclusive interview with the 42-year-old Federer. The first question was to ask him what regrets he had. What are some of your own regrets when it comes to journalism?
Bai Yansong: If there is any regret about , it is that it took too long. To give an example, we made an agreement with Sister Jing (Jing Yidan) three years ago that we would do "Moving China" for the last time and then leave. I told our new media reporters, but for various reasons, Sister Jing had no choice but to leave. If I don’t do it for the next year, I must help him get on the horse and give him a ride. I express every year that this is my last year, but I really feel that I should not do it again. I hope that 2024 will be my last time doing "Moving China", and I must let others take over. There are so many outstanding young people now, and I am also reducing the amount of "News 1+1". I hope someone will tell me to stop now, because I have been hoping to quit.
But many things are not decided by me. Even if I express my wish again and again, I can't say that I won't go to work today. But I keep expressing this wish and I am also reducing my workload. , basically all the large-scale programs that I can promote have been promoted, so I hope that I can really retreat behind the scenes in 2024.
I believe that there will always be better young people. To give birth to new and better young people, there must be a new behavior, whether it is called reform, or progress, or change, so that they will have the opportunity to show the capabilities of the new generation. If you just follow a tradition, it will be difficult. Our group of people were able to come out because we were lucky enough to catch up with the TV news reform of "Eastern Time and Space". In fact, our work was very average at first, but because no one had seen green plants, our cacti were regarded as green plants. Of course, we worked hard later. You can't always use us as a reference. People are at a disadvantage. We have been doing it for thirty years, and they just started doing it. I think we must trust young people.
Southern Weekend: You chose to stick to . Are you reluctant to give up something?
Bai Yansong: I think it has always been because of the news here. I work in journalism, I study journalism, so the news is here, where do you think I should go? Leaving is a personal choice, there is nothing to judge or say, just wish me well, it is all a personal choice. On the other hand, if I were to still want to do journalism, where do you think I should go? Can you tell me where to go? But I think it’s time to hand over the baton. How can one person run the baton for so long? I even hate myself.
Sometimes I ask myself, Lao Bai, why did you choose to study journalism? Looking back now, I feel lucky that I am quite suitable for this industry. I think this is the most important thing.I often communicate with students, and I must ask the most important question. Don't fool me with words like "Is it suitable for you?" If it suits you, that's fine. I think I'm suitable, so there are many businesses that seem to be very good. How much money do you want to make as a business? I'm not suitable for business, and I'll lose a lot.
No matter how dazzling many industries are, I am not suitable for it. I do not show myself there and have no sense of accomplishment. What suits me well about media is that you never know what will happen tomorrow. I had just finished changing my clothes and changed into a soccer attire. I was about to play football with my buddies at the Fengtai Sports Center. Suddenly my pager rang, asking me to call back and go back to Taichung. The Yugoslavia embassy was bombed. Come and do a live broadcast. I just came back from shooting in Japan and I was completely exhausted. When I went to Yunnan the next day, I told me to relax. At the Kunming Airport, I was told it was an earthquake, and after a while I said it was Sichuan. Unfortunately, all the schedule was changed and I flew back to Beijing and went directly to the studio. I think this kind of uncertain life is suitable for me. You said you like peace and quiet. I want to know what life will be like in half a month, so don’t work in the media.
You have met a lot of people you never thought you would see, and you have been to a lot of places you never thought you would go. In addition, you don’t know what will happen tomorrow, so you will always be curious about tomorrow. I am interested in people, I am interested in the distance, I am curious about tomorrow, I have regrets, sufferings and pain, but I have no complaints, I am suitable and it is my own choice.
Southern Weekend: You once said that the mid-life crisis comes before the age of forty, and you are confused when you are forty. Has the confusion been resolved now?
Baiyansong: more. Recently, I will have two more programs to invite two economists. This is our routine every year. Of course, we hope that the economy will get better in 2024, the Year of the Dragon. After all, development is the last word. If the economy gets better and everyone's income increases, tomorrow will be better, expectations will become higher, and everyone will be in a much better mood now.
Southern Weekend: "Southern Weekend" is about to celebrate its 40th anniversary. You have watched it come to this point and have been interviewed by us many times. What are your thoughts and expectations?
Bai Yansong: A newspaper is the same as a person's life. It does not last a lifetime. It is impossible to be better than before every day. After hard work, dazzling, and success, there must be another curve. I like the Tao Te Ching very much. It talks about transformation in the opposite direction. It is inevitable, although the process is not that fast.
What is the most stressful? I would answer that time is the biggest pressure on me. When you are 55 years old, you can still play football for a few years, unlike when you were 25 years old and thought you could play football for a lifetime, but I am 55 years old. I now play double games every week, which is good when you think about it. Compared with my peers, it’s good, but no matter how good you are, can you play until you are 65? What's more important is to maintain a certain level of competition. I think there is a problem with any idea that it can always maintain that level of height. I often say that after working in the news media for so many years and catching up with the TV news reform in 1993, I feel very happy. If I wanted to stay like that forever, I think I would be going too far and I would never think that way.
accepts all changes. The important thing is that you did it when the times and peers around you needed you. How many newspapers can commemorate their forty years with tears in their eyes? People in Nanzhou today, especially many young colleagues, do what they should do every day, and maybe in the process, tomorrow will gradually become a little better. What's more, the media is always changing, and technology is always pushing the media forward. There will be no bottlenecks, and tomorrow's challenges will not be less than yesterday's.
Southern Weekend reporter Zhang Rui
editor-in-chief Li Muyan
