FILE PHOTO: “A Celebration of Cherry Blossoms Across China,” a VR news feature produced by CCTV’s “VR Immersive News” channel, which uses virtual reality technology to present news content in a fully immersive 360° environment.

As a paradigmatic instance of digital technology reshaping media logic, virtual reality (VR) journalism reconstructs news narratives through immersive experience, transcending the boundaries of traditional reporting and demonstrating how advanced media technologies can empower journalism. When the principle of authenticity in news reporting encounters the inherent “plasticity” of virtual space, the traditional paradigm of “representing reality” on the basis of objective facts is persistently challenged by a technologically embodied logic of “experiencing reality.” If a report is virtual, can it still be real? Can it still satisfy the requirements of journalistic truth? As a form of journalism constructed through advanced media technologies and realized within virtual environments, how can VR journalism carry and manifest the truthfulness expected of news? Given that VR news productions launched by major media institutions have generally been recognized as credible, and that the field continues to advance rapidly, it is both necessary to respond to the ethical questions raised by new technologies and imperative to offer a rigorous reexamination of journalism’s foundational principle—the principle of news authenticity—in order to guide the orderly development of VR journalism.

Pursuit of truth in VR journalism

Exploring the relationship between VR technology and journalistic truth inevitably leads to questions that appear paradoxical. Something explicitly virtual may nonetheless meet the standards of journalistic authenticity; a technologically constructed virtual environment may still convey and substantiate truth. Practice shows that the virtuality of VR journalism—expressed through algorithmic modeling and symbolic production, multisensory immersive dissemination, and user-participatory dynamic construction—is not inherently incompatible with traditional requirements such as objectivity, accuracy, and fact verification. On the contrary, technological affordances can expand the connotation of journalistic truth: from static factual accuracy to dynamic experiential authenticity, and from objective existence to intersubjective understanding. Such expansion is not only an inevitable consequence of media transformation but also a creative development within the theoretical system of journalistic truth.

Although VR journalism introduces new ontological forms, audiences remain capable of distinguishing between virtual representation and material reality through metacognitive mechanisms. Meanwhile, professional news organizations are establishing new “authenticity contracts” by clearly indicating the degree of technological intervention involved in production. At the technical level, blockchain-based traceability systems offer mechanisms for verifying the provenance of virtual elements. In this sense, VR technology is not detached from journalistic truth; rather, it has, in certain respects, upheld and innovatively advanced the principle of authenticity.

Traditional conceptions of journalistic truth have primarily emphasized factual accuracy—news must faithfully represent events as they occurred. Yet within a media ecology shaped by VR technologies, this single dimension of “factual truth” reveals its conceptual limits and cannot fully account for the reconfiguration of truth undertaken by VR journalism. This suggests that discussions of authenticity in journalism should not remain confined to the level of objective facts alone. As media technologies undergo successive waves of disruption, forms of news communication have evolved—from text and image to immersive virtual environments—while modes of reception have shifted from one-way transmission to embodied interaction. Amid this dual transformation of technological empowerment and cognitive reorientation, the meaning of the principle of journalistic authenticity warrants careful reexamination.

VR journalism integrates both “factual truth” and “experiential truth,” achieving both continuity with the traditional authenticity principle and a substantive expansion of it. It retains the core logic of journalistic truth while opening new perceptual dimensions for its presentation through technological empowerment. By transforming one-way transmission of facts into a bidirectional construction of meaning, VR journalism approaches or seeks to understand reality through simulated experience. The result is neither a mirror-like duplication of the physical world nor a purely digital simulacrum; rather, it is co-constructed through human–machine collaboration. It is no longer a simple description of facts, but a composite experience that includes emotions, perspectives, and contexts perceived by producers and audiences alike. In this respect, VR journalism may be understood as an experiment in experiential authenticity.

Practical boundaries of VR news production

The application of VR technologies in journalism is gradually becoming routine practice. With generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools such as Sora producing data-driven imagery and simulated video that permeate the news field, a pressing question emerges: in an information environment where the virtual and the real intertwine, where should the boundaries of technological application be drawn? In pursuing journalistic innovation and deeper technological integration, safeguarding authenticity is not merely an operational concern; it becomes a philosophical and ethical question that touches the very essence of journalism. VR technology offers new possibilities for news production. When responsibly deployed, it contributes in two principal ways: by enabling narrative innovation through scene reconstruction and by deepening communicative impact through emotional resonance.

As a “compensatory medium,” VR can overcome the spatial and temporal constraints of traditional journalism. Through 3D simulation and immersive perception, it enables the reconstruction of scenes otherwise inaccessible to journalists and audiences. Such scenes, however, do not constitute fabrication. VR reconstructions are grounded in factual investigation and data, simulating and augmenting verified events. In recreating events that cannot be directly revisited—such as disaster sites or historical episodes—the principle of minimal intervention must prevail. At the same time, VR enhances interactivity and engagement by allowing audiences to select viewing perspectives and modes of interaction that enable more personalized and immersive experiences.

By reorganizing sensory perception, VR journalism heightens the fusion of audiovisual language and emotional resonance. From its inception, this disruptive capacity has prompted concern among defenders of conventional norms. The central controversy lies precisely here: when technology endows journalism with powerful affective guidance, how can it avoid becoming an instrument of manipulation? To guard against this risk, VR journalism must uphold three ethical safeguards in empathetic storytelling. First, factual frameworks must remain rigidly constrained: verifiable objective data markers must be embedded in virtual scenes. Second, narrative plurality must be preserved by adopting “multibranch narrative” techniques that allow users to choose among experiential pathways, mitigating the risk of emotional coercion resulting from a single perspective. Third, technological processes must be transparent and traceable. By establishing provenance systems—such as blockchain-based source tracking—and openly disclosing how virtual environments are constructed, news organizations can reduce suspicions surrounding opaque technological “black boxes.”

Upholding, adjusting authenticity principle in technology–ethics balance

The urgency of revisiting truth in the context of VR journalism stems from the internal logic of technology itself. When media institutions privilege instrumental technological value, the possibility that technology may displace human agency can be overlooked. In particular, with the deep integration of GAI and VR—even under nominal “human–machine collaboration” scenarios—overreliance on algorithmic generation risks shifting VR news production from “human selective narration” toward “algorithmic probabilistic generation.” In such circumstances, journalists may cease to occupy their central role, and may even cede subjectivity to GAI systems that independently generate content. This “subjectless production” model threatens to erode the traditional chain of accountability underpinning journalistic truth.

The more VR journalism strives for immersive presence, the greater the risk that the ontological status of events may blur. Yet, if guided appropriately, experiential immersion can also activate experiential authenticity as a catalyst for rational engagement. The tension between the risk of equating “experience” with “truth” and the genuine value of experiential expansion ultimately reflects the broader challenge of balancing technological application with journalistic ethics. Only by carefully locating this equilibrium can journalism innovate without compromising its foundational commitment to authenticity.

The primary task is to construct a scientifically grounded and comprehensive system of technical norms. News organizations, in collaboration with professional institutions, technical experts, and ethicists, should formulate clear regulatory frameworks for governing the application of VR technologies in news production. Such standards should encompass data collection, scene simulation, content production and editing, and technological usage, ensuring the legality and ethical legitimacy of technological practices and safeguarding the principle of authenticity.

The principle of transparency must serve as the ethical cornerstone of VR news production. Transparency requires producers to disclose the extent of technological intervention—for example, by clearly informing audiences about production processes and technological methods and marking such information prominently. By requiring metadata annotation and disclosure of algorithmic logic, regulatory mechanisms can help convert technological opacity into transparent information, enabling audiences to maintain critical scrutiny of journalistic truth even within immersive environments.

In addition, a rigorous ethical review mechanism must also be established. In accordance with established journalistic ethical codes, the production process and final outputs of VR journalism should be subject to comprehensive supervision and evaluation, not only for factual accuracy but also for issues such as privacy protection and broader social impact. Works that are likely to provoke ethical controversy would require in-depth risk assessment, and where deficiencies are identified, media organizations should undertake prompt corrective measures.

Looking forward, the paradigm of journalistic truth may further evolve toward processual authenticity. By rendering technological procedures transparent and data sources traceable, verification of truth will shift from the final stage of the production chain to every link within it. Only in this way can advanced media technologies genuinely expand the horizons of human cognition rather than obscure the texture of reality.

Qi Qingyan is an associate professor from the School of Media and Commination at Anhui University of Arts. Ding Baiquan is a professor from the School of Journalism and Communication at Nanjing University. This article has been edited and excerpted from Journal of Fujian Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), Issue 5, 2025.