評論
打印
Unit 3 What Is News?
第三單元 新聞是什么？
Neil Postman and Steve Powers
尼爾·波茲曼，史蒂夫·鮑爾斯
All this talk about news—what is it? We turn to this question because unless a television viewer has considered it, he or she is in danger of too easily accepting someone else's definition—for example, a definition supplied by the news director of a television station; or even worse, a definition imposed by important advertisers. The question, in any case, is not a simple one, and it is even possible that many journalists and advertisers have not thought deeply about it.
所有人都會提起新聞，到底新聞是什么？之所以討論這個問題，是因為如若觀眾不去思考這個問題，就只會輕易接受別人的定義——比如電視臺新聞主任的定義，或者更糟，大廣告商的定義——這是非常危臉的。無論如何，這不是個簡單的問題，甚至可能很多記者和廣告商都沒有深入思考過這個問題。
A simplistic definition of news can be drawn by paraphrasing Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous definition of the law. The law, Holmes said, is what the courts say it is. Nothing more. Nothing less. In similar fashion, we might say that the news is what television directors and journalists say it is. In other words, when you turn on your television set to watch a network or local news show, whatever is on is, by definition, the news. But if we were to take that approach, on what basis would we say that we haven't been told enough? Or that a story that should have been covered wasn't? Or that too many stories of a certain type were included? Or that a reporter gave a flagrantly biased account?
簡單點說，新聞的定義可以仿照奧利弗·溫德爾·霍姆斯大法官關于法律的著名定義。霍姆斯說，什么是法律？法院說什么是法律就是法律。如此而已，豈有它哉。同樣，我們也可以說，電視新聞負責人和新聞記者們說什么是新聞也就是新聞。換言之，當你打開電視機觀看新聞聯播或本地新聞節目的時候，不管上面講些什么，根據定義，這就是新聞。但是，如果我們接受這種定義方式，我們依據什么可以認為所獲得的信息不夠全面？或者本該報道的消息并沒有報道？或者同一類消息報道過量？又或者記者的報道帶有太多偏見？
If objections of this kind are raised, then we must have some conception of the news that the news show has not fulfilled. Most people, in fact, do have such a conception, although they are not always fully conscious of what it is. When people are asked "what is the news?" the most frequent answer given is "what happened that day?" This is a rather silly answer since even those who give it can easily be made to see that an uncountable number of things happen during the course of a day, including what you had for breakfast, which could hardly be classified as news by any definition: In modifying their answer, most will add that the news is "important and interesting things that happened that day." This helps a little but leaves open the question of what is "important and interesting" and how that is decided. Embedded somewhere in one's understanding of the phrase "important and interesting events" is one's definition of "the news".
諸如此類的異議一多，我們就應該明白新聞報道并沒有滿足我們所有人的需求。事實上，大多數人都能意識到這點，只是并沒有完全清醒地認識到。當被問及“什么是新聞？”時，人們最常見的回答是“每天發生的事”。這其實是一個很糟糕的答案，即使是回答者本人都能很輕易地發覺每天有不計其數的亊情發生，包括早餐的內容這種在任何意義上都不能算是新聞的事情。因此，在修改答案的時候，他們往往會加上新聞“是每天發生的、重要又有趣的事情”。這當然有些幫助，但是到底什么是“重要或有趣的事情”，這點如何判斷？這個問題仍然沒有解決。可以說，在這些人的意識中，對他們來講“重要或有趣的事情”就是他們對于新聞的定義。
