Journalism After Snowden: Understanding a Pivotal Moment for News Media

Photo by Eileen Barroso

艾米丽·贝尔出生于英国，现任教于哥伦比亚大学新闻学院，并担任学院陶氏数字新闻中心（Tow Center for Digital Journalism）主任。当她说起自己年轻时在英国《观察家报》（The Observer）当记者的经历，她的学生简直不敢相信。当时没有网络，没有线上数据库，甚至没有电子邮件。所有的采访都需要通过面对面或通话的方式完成。

When Emily Bell, a British-born professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the founding director of its Tow Center for Digital Journalism, tells her students how she did her job as a young reporter at The Observer, they don’t believe her. No internet, no online data bases, no email. Interviews conducted face-to-face or by phone.

“那时每天早晨都需要在伦敦收看BBC的《今日新闻》（Today），然后根据节目内容确定这天的主要新闻。现在我早上起床之后，刷一下推特，就有上千种不同的声音指向（它们认为）今天需要关注的新闻。”

“Every morning you would watch the BBC’s Today program in London, and it would set the news agenda for the day,” Bell said. “Now I get up and I scroll through Twitter, and the agenda is set by 1,000 different voices.”

贝尔现在于学界极具分量，特别是在关于数字媒体及其对新闻业或积极或消极的影响等问题上。贝尔担任了《后斯诺登时代的新闻业：在监管中新闻自由的未来》（哥伦比亚大学出版社）（Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State, Columbia University Press）一书的编辑，书中对新闻业未来的看法并不乐观。

Bell is now among the leading voices, particularly when it comes to digital practices and how they are changing journalism for better and, sometimes, for worse. She is the editor of a new book, Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State (Columbia University Press), that takes a hard look at the future of the industry.

哥伦比亚大学的校长李·卡罗尔·布林格（Lee C. Bollinger）本人是著名的拥护宪法第一修正案的学者，他十分强调哥大对新闻自由的坚持。就在去年，布林格宣布成立了“奈特第一修正案研究所”（the Knight First Amendment Institute），该研究所由哥伦比亚大学与奈特基金会（the Knight Foundation）合作建立。哥伦比亚大学新闻学院的院长史蒂夫·寇尔（Steve Coll）曾通过对美国国家安全和金融监管的报道两次荣获普利策奖，他同时也是《纽约客》杂志的专职撰稿人。

To start with, University President Lee C. Bollinger is a noted First Amendment scholar who has emphasized Columbia’s commitment to press freedom. Last year, Bollinger announced the creation of the Knight First Amendment Institute, a partnership between the University and the Knight Foundation, whose aim is to help defend and promote free press and free expression in the digital age through research, education and, if need be, litigation. The dean of the journalism school is Steve Coll, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting on national security and financial regulations; he is also a staff writer for The New Yorker.

在位于普利策楼（Pulitzer Hall）内的哥大新闻学院里，陶氏中心携手布朗媒体创新学院（The Brown Institute for Media Innovation），为新闻和工程专业的学生讲解如何在数字时代进行重要的新闻报道。

At Pulitzer Hall, where the Journalism School is housed, the Tow Center shares space with the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, which brings together journalism and engineering students to focus on how to tell important stories in a digital environment.

问

是什么促使你撰写关于斯诺登事件一书的？

What inspired you to write about Snowden?

答

自从爱德华·斯诺登（前美国国家安全局National Security Administration雇员，泄露了关于美国监视项目的机密材料）公布国家安全机密以来，社会上产生了一系列的讨论，这本书也应运而生。书中的多篇论文写自曾为文件公开发布做出努力的人，也有很多篇来自著名学者，他们分析了信息泄露这一事件的新闻及法律意义。这本书还思考了我们当下所身处的严峻的媒体环境。

The book is an outgrowth of a series of public discussions after the publication of classified national security material from Edward Snowden [the former National Security Administration employee who leaked classified information about the U.S. surveillance programs]. It includes essays from many of the people involved in the effort to get that information out, as well as other leading thinkers on the journalistic and legal implications of that release. The book also looks at the very challenging journalistic environment we are in.

问

记者面临着什么样的挑战？

What challenges do journalists face?

答

反思斯诺登事件的发展过程，你会发现他起初找到自己的上司时提及：“我觉得现在让我们做的事是违法的“的时候， 什么都没有发生。但当他带着高度机密的材料逃走，官方便宣称他是个叛徒，严重威胁国家安全。而事实却是他和维基解密（WikiLeaks）一样把信息发在网上，只不过换了一种方式而已。我们一定得仔细思考如何处理那些揭露了具有公众价值信息的人。在过去，如果是涉及维护人民大众利益的大事，记者被认为是可以不受限于法律的。

When you go right back to the sequence of events with Snowden, he went to his superiors and said: “I think that what we’re being asked to do lies outside the purview ofthe law.” Nothing happens. He absconds with highly sensitive material, and the political narrative becomes that he is a traitor and has endangered national security, when the reality is that he acted in a way that is materially different from, say, WikiLeaks, which just published everything on the internet. We have to think hard about how we deal with people who are disclosing things of public value. In the past journalists have been able to break the law if we have a strong enough public interest.

问

你是认为新闻界目前面临存在危机的人之一。你这样说想表达什么？

You are among those who say that journalism is now in an existential crisis. What do you mean by that?

答

现今在互联网和脸书、谷歌和推特（这样的社交媒体上）汇集了大量的内容信息，而它们的兴起破坏了传统新闻的商业模式。但我认为更重要的是，它们也削弱了相关与影响的模式。当今有其他许多信息获取渠道，新闻媒体只是其中一种。当我还是一名伦敦的媒体记者时，《纽约时报》的发行量有一百万份，主要集中在纽约地区；如今《纽约时报》在全球拥有一百六十万订阅者，向全世界人推送新闻。《纽约时报》虽然拥有惊人广泛的阅读群体，但其影响力却变得碎片化和分散化，因为大众同样可以通过其他渠道获取信息。

The internet and the rise of the Facebooks and Googles and Twitters, which aggregate so much content, have undermined the business model of journalism. But they have also undermined the relevance and the influence model, which I think is almost more important. There are many alternative ways to get information today, and journalism is just one way. When I was a media reporter in London, The New York Times’ circulation was a million U.S. subscribers, focused in the New York area; today it has 1.6 million subscribers worldwide and it’s in everybody’s feed. So it has an amazing reach, but also a fragmented and diffuse impact because the public can turn to any number of other outlets.

问

为什么一些受人尊敬的传统新闻媒体不再被认为是值得信赖的？

Why are some traditional and respected news outlets not considered trustworthy any longer?

答

如今每个人都是一个自媒体。我们过去总是用阅读量、收益及影响来衡量新闻媒体，或许换成“影响力”这个词更好。你是否拥有大量的受众群体？这些受众能不能变现？当下，阅读量、影响力及收益全依靠第三方渠道，比如谷歌或脸书。正如我们所看到的，现在许多机构都面临信任危机，因为支持这些机构的体制正在以我们不可预测的速度和不可见的方式改变着。

Everybody is now a publisher. We always used to evaluate journalism on reach, revenue and impact; perhaps a better word might be “influence.” Do you have a large audience? Does it convert into money? Today, reach, influence and revenue are all dependent on third-party systems, like Google or Facebook. As we look at all institutions there is a crisis of trust in many of them because the systems that underpinned them are changing faster than we can understand and often in ways that we can’t see.

问

本届美国总统大选是否是新闻媒体影响力衰退的一个例子？

Is the U.S. presidential election an example of journalism’s waning influence?

答

总统选举时造成新闻媒体恐慌的其中一个因素是媒体人被告知“你错过了新闻”。

实际上关于两位候选人和不同选区的新闻报道都有非常之多，但这些新闻报道又总是难以凝聚（美国国民），因为新闻界中再没有像沃尔特·克朗凯特（1962年起担任CBS晚间新闻主播直至1981年退休）一样能在公众新闻议题的设定上起到关键作用的人。现在（对一件事情）可以有很多种不同的叙述方式。斯诺登事件就是一个棱镜，它反映出一个体制在多种层面上的改变和这之中利益关系的变化。总统大选则是另外一个例证，证明了大选经费的花销和候选人宣传渠道已从传统新闻媒体转移到了其他渠道，而由此我们也可以看出具有影响力的媒体也改变了。

One thing creating anxiety for news organizations regarding the election is the way they are being told “You missed the story.” In fact, there was so much reporting on both candidates, on what was going on in different constituencies. But there wasn’t a cohesive influence of the narrative, because there’s no one in journalism like, say, Walter Cronkite [who anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 until his retirement in 1981], who essentially sets the agenda. Now you can pick from an infinite number of narratives. Snowden was a prism that showed the many ways in which a system has changed and how the stakes are different. The election is another illustration of how money and distribution have been shifting from the press to somewhere else, and now we can see that influence has also shifted.

问

目前影响力的碎片化程度有多深？

To what extent is influence fragmented now?

答

我们不是在谈论一、两家新闻媒体如福克斯新闻（Fox News）与美国有线电视新闻网络（CNN），尽管他们都是十分有影响力的媒体。现在我们谈论的是其他的一群在改变新闻叙事的力量，如Buzzfeed, Vice, Breitbart, Vox，以及你的朋友、家人和同事，他们都有自己的观点并把这些观点分享在自己的社交平台上，其中有一些平台可能是你之前都未曾看到过的。当人们分享这些内容时，他们会认为这就是现在全世界都在谈论的话题，但实际上并不是。

We’re not talking about one or two outlets, Fox News versus CNN, though they’re both very influential. Now we’re talking about a host of other endeavors that are moving the journalistic narrative, such as Buzzfeed, Vice, Breitbart, Vox. And you’re talking about your friends and your family and the people that you work with, who all have opinions and share things on their feeds which you might not have seen before. As people share these items they get the impression that that’s what the whole world is talking about, but it is not.

问

那么这种情况将我们置于何种境地？

So where does that leave us?

答

在陶氏数字新闻中心，我们最大的研究课题围绕着我们目前拥有的这些新兴力量体系，比如谷歌和脸书这样的信息聚合服务器。他们几乎吸纳了曾经流入新闻媒体的所有资金流。

Our big research questions here at the Tow Center revolve around the idea that we have these new power systems, aggregational machines like Google and Facebook. They are attracting nearly all of the revenue that would at one time have gone to journalism.

问

信息平台应该与内容提供者分享收入来源吗？

Should the platforms be sharing their revenue with the content providers?

答

一个很好的原因能说明信息平台为什么应该分享收入：它们需要可靠并持续的信息来维持运作。它们需要人们不断回访和使用。记住一点，影响力转移了，但这种转移完全是由用户驱使的。信息平台表示它们不想为拥有的影响力负责，它们根本就是想假装自己没有影响力，但事实上它们有影响力，什么都不做实际上是在以不良与破坏的方式施加影响力。

There’s a good reason that they should, because they need reliably consistent information for their products to work. They need people who come back and connect through their products. Remember, influence has shifted, but that change is entirely driven by users. The platforms have said they don’t really want to take responsibility for having influence, in fact they want to pretend that they have no influence. But the fact is that they have it, and to do nothing is actually to exercise influence in an unhealthy and damaging way.

问

脸书宣称它没有信息内容“把关人”。你认同吗？

Facebook says it has no editorial gatekeeper. Do you agree?

答

我认为把关人是存在的。那个人就是马克·扎克伯格。他与其他企业所有人或者过去的新闻出版集团所有者一样。他把自己看作工程师，但他对外界也有自己的观点，他谈论这些观点，而他的企业正在引导着公众的言论。就在上周有一名来自脸书（Facebook）公司的执行官到我的课堂上来进行演讲。这是第一步，有一些像他这样（身份地位）的人对新闻业进行更多更积极的思考。我认为这是一个好的征兆。脸书和谷歌越快透明化、越快从文化角度上了解和适应作为一个优秀的新闻媒体需要具备的要素，以及知道怎么保持并一直发展下去，情况就会越好。

Oh, I think there is. It’s Mark Zuckerberg. He is the same as any proprietor and any news owner in the past. He sees himself as an engineer, but he has views about the outside world, he talks about them, and his business is in shaping a kind of public discourse. Just last week a Facebook executive came to speak to my class. That’s a first, to have someone like him engaged in thinking much more actively about journalism. I think it’s a good sign. The sooner Facebook and Google are fully transparent and culturally attuned to what supports and constitutes good journalism and what you need to protect it and make it sustainable, the better things will be. Not necessarily for everyone, though. And we will see a point where the gatekeepers are picking winners and losers.

问

什么让你对未来抱有希望?

What gives you hope for the future?

答

这个周末我又看了一遍《总统班底》（All the President’s Men）这部影片，它让再一次我想起水门事件在美国新闻史上是怎样的至高点。当你再一次观看这部电影或读一读实录，你会发现70年代华盛顿邮报所经历的事情与现在的CNN以及“落寞”的纽约时报如出一辙。他们都重复地被政府称为骗子。他们都有一位线人仍未公开发表他们认为他该说的话。所以你要怀有信念；记者们是对的。人们可以虚构或者报道不一样的事实，但是两套事实相争和一套事实与一套胡言之间是存在差异的。这是无可避免的。

I rewatched the film All the President’s Men over the weekend. It reminded me how Watergate was a high point for American journalism. When you go back and watch the film or read the book, you realize that exactly the same thing that happened to the Washington Post in the 1970s is happening to CNN and the “failing” New York Times right now. They were repeatedly called liars by the government. They had a source who had not said what they had thought he’d said. So you have to keep the faith; the reporters were right. People can fabricate or report alternative facts, but there is a difference between two sets of facts that compete and a set of facts and a set of nonsense. You can’t escape from that.

艾米丽·贝尔

Emily Bell

哥伦比亚大学新闻学院教授

陶氏中心主任

Professor of Journalism and Director of the Tow Center, Columbia University

2006-2010 英国卫报新闻媒体集团；数字内容主任

Britain’s Guardian News & Media; director of digital content 2006-2010

2001-2006 卫报Guardian.co.uk网络版；主编

The Guardian online edition at Guardian.co.uk; editor-in-chief 2001-2006

2000-2001 媒体Guardian.co.uk；创始人、编辑

Media Guardian.co.uk; founder and editor 2000-2001

1990-2000 观察家报（后被购入卫报）；记者、财经编辑

The Observer (later bought by Guardian); media reporter and later business editor 1990-2000

The translation is for your reference only

译文仅供参考，内容以英文为准

内容有删减

编译：俊良、思明

校对：翩跹

责编：慎之

原文链接：http://news.columbia.edu/Journalism-After-Snowden-Understanding-a-Pivotal-Moment-for-News-Media