(The Chairman criticized the literary and artistic propaganda of the *People's Daily* at a meeting. On June 23, Comrade XX conveyed this at a general meeting of all staff members of the editorial departments of the *People's Daily* and the New China News Agency.)

The Chairman said: In 1961, the *People's Daily* propagated the idea that "it is harmless to have ghosts," and afterwards never gave an account of this matter. On the one hand, the *People's Daily* talks about class struggle and carries out anti-revisionist propaganda, but on the other hand, it does not make a self-criticism regarding the matter of promoting ghost plays. This puts the newspaper in a self-contradictory position.

The Chairman said: After the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee in 1962, the whole Party has been grasping class struggle, but the *People's Daily* has all along failed to criticize the "theory that it is harmless to have ghosts." A meeting must be convened in the newspaper office to explain this issue to everyone, and to explain it to the comrades of the New China News Agency as well. The Chairman said: The *People's Daily* has done well in political and economic propaganda, and its anti-revisionist propaganda has achieved results. However, in the realm of culture and art, the work of the *People's Daily* has not been done well.

The Chairman said: For a long time, the *People's Daily* has not grasped theoretical work. Ever since the *People's Daily* first began publication, I have criticized this shortcoming, but there has been no improvement until very recently, when it began to pay attention to this work. In the past, the *People's Daily* did not engage in theoretical work, reportedly for fear of making mistakes, wanting everything published in the paper to be one hundred percent correct. It is said this was learned from the Soviet *Pravda*. In fact, there is no person who does not make mistakes, nor is there any newspaper that does not make mistakes. *Pravda* is now moving toward its opposite; it is not that it makes no mistakes, but that it makes the biggest mistakes. The *People's Daily* should not be afraid of making mistakes; rather, if it makes mistakes, it should correct them, and that will be fine.