Chinese official media use various types of news framing to report entrepreneurial failure. However, there is limited knowledge on how the official media make sense of (sensemaking) and give sense to (sensegiving) entrepreneurial failure events, and its subsequent effects on public cognition and failure tolerance climate. Using entrepreneurial failure events reported by Chinese official media in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong from 2015 to 2017, this study applies content analysis and builds a process model of sensemaking and sensegiving by the official media in reporting entrepreneurial failure. There are three main findings. (i) Chinese official media use two types of news framing for making sense of entrepreneurial failure: risk framing and opportunity framing. (ii) The sensegiving structures of these two types of framing differ significantly in terms of the event category of entrepreneurial failure, the attributes of entrepreneurial failure and the outcomes interpretation of entrepreneurial failure. (iii) The type of news framing used is dependent on regional entrepreneurial activity and can shape the public’s cognition of entrepreneurial failure and entrepreneurial intention. Combining the knowledge of news framing in communication studies with sensemaking theory in strategic management, this study investigates the social construction processes of entrepreneurial failure by Chinese official media. The findings offer important implications for recognizing how official media systematically and structurally choose the type of news framing to construct entrepreneurial failure stories, and their roles in shaping of public cognition.