Media and Internet reports cannot be blocked

Via the rapid mass media, we witnessed many emergencies in 2010, including the marine oil spill in Dalian, industrial chemical barrels rushing into the Songhua River in Jilin and the mudslides disaster in Zhouqu of Gansu.

Since these emergencies all happened suddenly, various parties were involved and different media groups were reporting closely on the situation, the government faced great challenges in handling these incidents.

Along with the strengthening of the media's information dissemination function, especially with the rapid development of the Internet, news media is changing people's modes of production and lifestyle and also affecting the governance environment of the Party and government.

Reality showed that when facing emergency incidents, the government's manner of executing the "soft mission" of exchanging information, releasing news and guiding public opinion will, to a very large extent, affect the achievement of the "hard target" of maintaining the steady and orderly society when handling emergency incidents.

Facing different emergency incidents, how should the government develop the reflex-like emergency response capacity? How to truly realize the "well-treat, well-control, and well-use the media" concept, and improve the government's "news governance capability?" These questions need to be further discussed.

By People's Daily Online