Zhang Wenhong, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, director of the National Medical Center for Infectious Diseases, director of the Institute of Infection and Health at Fudan University, and director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital, was invited by Li Hongbing, a distinguished professor at Fudan University, to attend the School of Journalism's "I'm on the Spot" series of lectures and start a dialogue with future journalists titled "Medicine and News: The Power of Health Communication."
Jiefang Daily·Shangguan News reporters participated in the nearly three-hour lecture and dialogue. As a "person present" who was at the eye of the public opinion storm, he said: "Public opinion is a double-edged sword. It can hurt people, but it can also save people. We cannot tear down the square because we are afraid of being hurt, but we must learn how to have rational dialogue in the square."
"hide"
After several years, the impression of meeting Zhang Wenhong for the first time still left Li Hongbing "unforgettable".
It was 2020, and the epidemic hit suddenly. Li Hongbing, who was the deputy director of the People's Daily Shanghai Branch at the time, vaguely felt that he was "hard" towards the news media, and from time to time he "taunted" reporters who asked unprofessional questions. Although she had already written popular articles such as "How to Get Rid of Zhang Wenhong's Dark Circles", she praised him for being "professional, harmonious, truth-telling, down-to-earth, and straightforward" and was "the reassurance the public needs most."
Zhang Wenhong cried out. After getting acquainted with each other, he confessed to Li Hongbing that he was indeed "quite resistant" to reporters at first and wished to "avoid the news."
But the news didn't let him go.
In the three years since the epidemic, he has gone from being the director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Shanghai Huashan Hospital to a public figure who accidentally became a hot topic. In order to tell the public the real situation, he even set up a self-media account. It was not until May 6, 2023, that Zhang Wenhong decided to issue the "last one". On that day, the World Health Organization declared that the new coronavirus epidemic no longer constituted a "public health emergency of international concern."
After wanting to leave countless times, he finally waited for the right time.
He wrote: "The virus will still exist, and the pandemic has passed. As far as the epidemic is concerned, the whole world is in the same situation. Everything we go through now will make us better face the future. Let us say goodbye for now and speed up to get back to normal work. No matter life is difficult or easy, as long as we don't quit, we will eventually see the future we expect."
Anatomy
Therefore, standing on the podium of the School of Journalism at Fudan University, Zhang Wenhong laughed and said that he had "no escape". The person who invited him this time was Li Hongbing, who has become a distinguished professor at Fudan University and serves as the "Project Director of the Wangdao Journalism Excellence Class".
Li Hongbing once graduated from the journalism department of Fudan University. After graduating from school, he worked as a journalist for most of his life. He published more than one million words of works in the People's Daily. He is considered to be the earliest public interpreter of Fudan's folk school motto "free but useless". In her opinion, Zhang Wenhong is one of the most worth-seeing news figures of this era. When she returned to her alma mater to teach, she wanted to invite this doctor, who had been "pursued by reporters for three years," to talk to future reporters.
"My major is medicine, but objectively speaking, I can't help being written as a news person by you. So we are all news people." The atmosphere in the audience became lively. These are by no means polite words. What Zhang Wenhong wants to talk about is something he has slowly figured out during the three years he was "forced" to become a journalist: What is the relationship between medicine and journalism?
The students in the audience listened quietly, as if he was taking an anatomy class – dissecting two souls who seemed to have different professions.
bottom line
Throughout the speech, he teased out at least four similarities between medicine and journalism.
First, they are all case teachings, and each case is unique.
"We in medicine have always believed that every patient is different." Zhang Wenhong said that the core of medicine is that every case cannot be copied. He took the current AI assistance as an example. AI can give average diagnostic results, but high-level doctors know that for superficially similar things, the underlying logic may be completely different.
The same goes for news. If you only use algorithms and routines to report the appearance of events, you are tantamount to a "low-level doctor."
Second, neither is heading in the direction of making profits, but the destination is limitless.
He gave three examples: Sun Yat-sen, who studied medicine, founded the Republic of China, Lu Xun, who studied medicine, wrote incomparable texts, and Wang Changtian, who graduated from the Department of Journalism at Fudan University, founded Enlight Media and produced movies such as "Nezha". He said that the final destination of these two majors is unpredictable.
"Both industries require you to be as skilled as an immortal and as moral as a Bodhisattva, and may also allow you to earn very little money. But the value of these two majors is definitely not determined by how much money you earn." In his view, both medicine and journalism have great stem cell functions, and what they gain is not a narrow track, but an all-round ability that can be differentiated, repaired, and continuously regrown.
Third, they are all social immune systems, based on ultimate care for people.
He used the word "immunity." This is the area he is most familiar with.
Medicine provides physiological immunity, and journalism provides social immunity. Medicine deals with diseases, pseudoscience, and rumors to reduce physiological risks; news deals with chaos, false information, and social divisions to reduce social risks.
He mentioned the Hippocratic Oath of no harm. "Doctors cannot guarantee that they will treat the disease well, but they must not cause harm to the patient. It is not possible to gain profit by forcefully opening an operation that should not be performed."
The same goes for news. "Truth and objectivity are the bottom line." This sentence he said carries great weight.
He firmly believes that medicine and journalism are two sides of the same coin. Physical recovery is not the end point. If there are gaps in society, human integrity will not be possible.
Fourth, we must start from the facts and find the truth behind it.
He talked about a diagnosis and treatment case that he had just encountered before class. There was a patient whose existing test results pointed to benign, and the AI also judged it to be benign. But his intuition told him something was wrong. He did not stop at the level of feelings. He talked to the patient and suggested a biopsy. The results confirmed his judgment and gave the patient a chance for a radical cure.
"If I were the doctor who only relied on data and AI to treat patients, I might have misdiagnosed."
The same goes for his understanding of news dissemination. Facts are visible and measurable; truth is the logic, essence, and overall picture behind it.
Irresponsible communication is like a blind man touching an elephant. Those who touch the nose say it is long, and those who touch the legs say it is strong. But what is an elephant? It's that truth. Sometimes you can't see it because you don't want to see it. "
He admitted that traffic is important, but a lot of traffic remains in the description of immediate phenomena. Society still needs professional news media to condense information and provide the most essential truth.
meditation
After saying this, he looked around the lecture hall, his eyes swept across the young faces, and raised a question that made the audience think deeply: Why is there more traffic but less good news? If the screening mechanism moves in the direction of profitability, will we see things we don’t want to see? Can influence be measured in monetary terms?
"News media is not the same as self-media. Real journalism has its own bottom line, which is the same as the bottom line of medicine." He answered himself, "The essence of communication is to fight against entropy. If you only pursue traffic but not value, I think that is not what journalism should pursue."
He believes that good news should be "anatomy with body temperature". Of course journalism should be a dagger, without that sharpness it is worthless. But just a dagger is not enough, "We have to provide a constructive voice." To quote the famous saying in medicine, "Rarely cure, often help, always comfort." He pointed out, "When a patient is dying, you can't just throw away the patient. Doctors must have countermeasures at all times to ease the pain. The same is true for news. It cannot only expose without construction; it cannot only criticize without helping."
Topic
In the conversation after the speech, Li Hongbing asked: "Zhang Wenhong" in the public opinion field has been labeled many times, taken out of context, misinterpreted, and misunderstood. When these labels stick to his back, what does he think?
"When the sun comes out, the snow melts away. It's useless to explain too much. It's all over. Throw away what should be thrown away and speed up your investment in a new life." Zhang Wenhong concluded that the core issue is the issue of interest orientation. If he could realize that "there is nothing in the first place", he would be "nowhere to stir up dust", and all the shouting would not elevate himself to a high position, because he felt that he had nothing in the first place, and he "didn't care too much", just like the air has no color in the first place, and it is impossible to make it colorful.
Zhang Wenhong's answer made Li Hongbing smile and say that it was as if there was an eminent monk sitting next to him – neither happy nor sad, neither angry nor resentful.
But she immediately pointed out a more serious question: "The phenomenon of Zhang Wenhong deserves to be studied, not because he has no desires and is impeccable. The topic it leaves us is precisely – in today's era, how is it possible to 'speak well'? How to ensure that ordinary people can speak openly, rationally, and independently?"
Although he admitted that he was a little uncomfortable being "case" again, Zhang Wenhong still accepted this good question: "I have also seen many young people choose to end their lives after being bullied online. There is no interest entanglement in this, it may be that they have been wronged, and they care."
