The lecture in this morning was titled “Media’s Focus on CSR”. It was presented by Mr. Yu, the chief editor of WTO Guide, who started with the fatal bullet train crash happened on July 23rd and told us the viewpoints of different media. That case led to our topic. As a veteran in this industry, Mr. Yu explained the process of CSR development to us. CSR was first introduced in China in the 21st century, and the year 2006 was called the first year of CSR era in China. Our understanding also goes deeper step by step. At first, most people equal CSR to public welfare, charity, donation, etc. However, it covers more fields now. Besides those unrelated outsiders, enterprises start to care about the quality of their own product, the sustainability of their way to utilize resources, the degree of pollution they create and the concern they show towards their staff. At the same time, Corporate Social Responsibility is generalized to Social Responsibility, meaning that the objects become all members of the society.

I. About the Media: Fundamental Attributes and Development Process
  The famous News of the World was shut down, paying for the hacking scandal. It taught us a lesson about the media’s tradeoff between profit and duty. Of course, it goes for other companies as well. However, the media is different because their output is disclosure and publicity instead of tangible products. With this regard, the media must make no mistake about their positioning, and do the things they should to push the society forward. The media acts as supervisor sometimes, for its attribute determines such function of disclosing and spreading. Besides, the media has a feature of foreseeing. It should help guide the developing trend by spreading those great ideas, as it reaches a wide range of fields in the society. Moreover, the media is characterized by independence, which means it must hold its own standpoints insulated from any other groups or organizations. This requires the media has a proper value system.
  The media today is diversified, including newspapers, televisions, etc. In the 15th century, the media first appeared in the form of newspapers. Then the broadcast emerged in the U.S. in 1920. Television caught public attention in 1939, where the New York World Exposition was reported in that way. Then the internet followed, tracing back to the year 1969. Unfortunately, it failed to achieve an accelerating development for the tool limit. That is not the case today, however, as more and more platforms like mini-blog are being developed. Therefore, the media occupies a more significant status in our society.
II. Media’s Focus on CSR
  Here, media mainly refers to paper media, which contains newspapers and magazines. Foreign media like Fortune, BBC Broadcast, Business Review, etc. and local media like Chinese Entrepreneur, Southern Weekly, WTO Guide, etc. not only report the contributions that companies make, but also rank them according to the social responsibility they take. This is an effective way to raise awareness and stimulate actions. Taking the media’s power into account, CSR activities are increasingly launched by the companies, in which they begin to transform the awareness into real practice.
III. Media’s Focus on CSR in China
  The media plays a key role in spreading valuable concepts, serving the enterprises, studying CSR itself, and writing CSR reports for the firms. Apart from the above, some magazines even open special columns for CSR news. It is not wise to undervalue the media’s force that pushes our society forward.
  Two cases are typical as follows. One is Wangshi’s donation. Regardless of the public’s comments, we identify three levels of CSR: social responsibility that companies have to take, ought to take, and willing to take. At “have to take” level, companies must guarantee that their business is legal. At “ought to take” level, companies should take account of their staff and other stakeholders besides making profit legally. Furthermore, “willing to take” stands for other social responsibilities that companies are glad to take beyond the former two types. This case told us that enterprises should make use of their advantages when taking social responsibilities. The other case is Foxcoon employees jumping off the building. It warns companies at all times that social responsibility is far more than taking care of outsiders, it also asks for their concern for their employees.
IV. WTO Guide’s Interpretation and Action
  WTO Guide is a magazine focusing on research, since it was set up after China entering the WTO. These days, it turns to CSR issue to meet the needs of our society. Its core transaction covers consultation, brand evaluation, CSR report writing, training, journalist seminar, all of which are for the sake of CSR publicity. CSR = company strengths + social responsibility + economic benefit, and it is this equation that reflects their interpretation of CSR.
At the end of the lecture, Mr. Yu mentioned nation social responsibility, which in his opinion consists of national policy, commercial operation and social organization.
Today, we learnt that the media pays great attention to CSR, and it is a force pushing the society forward. The media takes advantage of its strengths to encourage the enterprises to take social responsibilities; meanwhile, it takes its own. It gives priority to CSR issue, and this will never change only if it even makes more efforts. Our country will enjoy a better development if the enterprises take their parts in taking social responsibility. Thanks to this lecture, we got to know more that beyond our professional knowledge. However, it seems that the media pays less or even no attention to nation social responsibility. So I deem that it probably implies a new trend.

By Group Three
July 25th