新闻自由是一个相对的词。我认为，第一新闻应该不受限制；第二，新闻应该对社会负责；第三，新闻应该促进社会稳定与进步。这三个方面互为联系，同等重要，不可分割。片面强调某一方面会带来问题，因而是有害的。

Freedom of the press is a relative term. In my opinion, firstly, the press should be unrestrained; secondly¹, the press should be responsible to society; and thirdly, the press should promote social stability and progress. The three aspects are integrated, equally important and inseparable. It is harmful to one-sidely stress only one aspect, as this would cause some problems.

美国也曾经面临过这样的局面，最初极其崇尚自由主义，而对自由主义的强调不当造成了滥用新闻自由概念的结果。这是新闻理论发展的第一阶段。后来美国新闻业发现了闻，于是提出了负责任的新闻这个概念，或者叫作社会责任理论，新闻理论于是进入了第二个发展阶段。现在世界已进入一个和平与发展的后冷战时期。全世界人民都渴望有一个稳定的、进步与和平发展的社会环境。他们真诚地希望媒体在促进社会稳定和进步方面发挥更大的作用，不要引起社会动荡与退步。我认为，这个后冷战时期标志着新闻理论已进入第三个发展时期。我认为，目前中国的传播媒体正在努力实践我前面所讲的三点。

The United States once faced this situation. It had much esteem² for Liberalism at the very beginning. However, its undue³ emphasis on this idea resulted in the excessive abuse of the freedom of the press. This was the first period of development of the press theory. Later on, the American press perceived their own problems and therefore, put forward the concept of the responsible press, or the theory of social responsibility, bringing the development of the press theory into the second period of development. Now the world has entered a pose-cold-war period of peace and development. People all over the world yearn⁴ for a social environment characterized by stability, progress and peaceful development. They earnestly hope the media will play an even greater role in promoting social stability and progress, instead of causing social turbulence⁵ and retrogression. This post-cold-war period, I believe, characterizes the emerging third period of development for the press theory. In my opinion, China’s media is striving to put the three aspects I mentioned earlier into practice.

西方媒体对中国的许多报道是不正确的，有时是非常不客观的，是非常不公正的。西方报纸很少报道中国的发展，它们感兴趣的不是中国的快速进步，而是存在的困难和问题。如果人们只依据这些报道，无视中国的现实，那么中国在他们脑海里便是一个很快就要垮台的社会。而事实恰恰相反，中国是一个政治上非常稳定的社会，是一个经济上快速发展的国家。

Many reports on China by the media of the West are not accurate, and sometimes very unobjective and very unfair. Reports on China’s development are rarely seen in Western newspapers. They show little concern for China’s rapid progress, but care only about the difficulties and problems. If one relied only on those reports and ignored the reality of China, the picture of China in one’s mind would be a society soon to collapse⁶. But quite on the contrary, China in fact is a politically very stable society and economically rapid growing country.

我们经常报道政府工作中存在的问题。读者可以从中发现，我们对这些问题的报道完全不同于西方的报道。我们知道在发展过程中产生这些问题在所难免。我们报道的目的是让人民为解决这些问题献计献策，而不是激发社会的动荡不安，引起误解，甚至歪曲事实。新闻媒介只有这样进行报道，才会被视为对社会的负责。

We often report problems that exist in the government’s work. Readers may find that our reports on these problems are totally different from Western reports. We know these issues arose naturally in the process of our development. The purpose of our report is to let people offer solutions to these problems, not to stir up social turmoil⁷ and lead to misunderstandings and even to the distortion of what is really happening. Only by reporting in this way can a news medium be regarded as responsible to society.