报 decomposes into the hand radical 扌 on the left and, on the right, the seal-script element 卩 with a 又 hand tucked beneath it (the IDS structure is ⿰扌⿸卩又). The picture is a scene of judgment: 卩 is a person bent at the knees, a kneeling figure, and the two hands seize that figure and hold it down. The original glyph staged an arrest and a sentence being passed.

Shuōwén places 报 under the 㚔 group and glosses it as 当罪人也, to pass judgment on an offender. The seal form shows the kneeling criminal pinned by a hand from behind while another hand presses the verdict home. The earliest sense is therefore not news at all but a legal ruling delivered, an authority answering a crime with its due.

From that courtroom act the meaning fanned outward along one logic: a 报 is a response that comes back. A verdict answers a crime, so 报 came to mean to repay, to requite, whether the requital is revenge or gratitude. To answer a question with information gave to report, to announce; the thing announced, set in print and answered to the public daily, gave 报纸 (bàozhǐ), the newspaper.

Japanese keeps the character as 報 (the unsimplified form) reading it hō in 情報 (jōhō, information) and 報告 (hōkoku, a report), preserving the same arc from judgment to message. The mainland simplification trimmed the seal-script 㚔 element on the left to the cleaner 扌, which is why the modern glyph reads so plainly as a hand.

Here the courtroom origin surfaces most plainly. A verdict is the state answering a crime, so 报 holds the sense of a return that matches what was given. Aim it at a kindness and it means to repay (回报); aim it at a wrong and it means to avenge (报仇). Both ride the same moral arithmetic: every act calls back its like.

Picture a courtroom from the seal-script era. A figure kneels, knees folded to the stone floor, and a bailiff's hand 扌 clamps the shoulder while a second hand 又 presses the warrant down from behind. The judge speaks the verdict aloud. That spoken answer, the state's reply to a crime, is the whole character: a hand and a sentence delivered back.

Now let the verdict echo outward. The same hand that delivered judgment can deliver any answer that comes back. It hands you the morning 报纸 (bàozhǐ), the day's events answered in print. It stamps your name onto a list when you 报名 (bàomíng). It returns a kindness when you 回报 (huíbào), or a wound when you 报仇 (bàochóu). Every time you meet 报, hear the courtroom verdict behind it: something given calls back its answer.