经济学人下载:新闻的福克斯化

If impartiality is already the exception rather than the rule, the internet is now eroding it further. In America it undermines local news monopolies by reducing advertising revenue and providing access to a wide range of alternative sources, thus undoing Mr Rosen’s grand bargain. In Britain and other countries where news broadcasters are required to be impartial, at least in theory, the convergence of television and the web makes such rules seem outdated. Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, said at a seminar last December that he thought the case for polemical, opinionated news channels was “persuasive”, though the BBC’s own news coverage would remain impartial. The internet has also compressed the news cycle, with headlines delivered instantly by smartphone or Twitter, creating a demand for immediate analysis and opinion.

如果公正已经成为一种例外而非规则，那么因特网更加剧了这种趋势。在美国，因特网正在蚕食地方新闻大亨，不但降低了其广告收入，也提供了更多信息来源，从而破坏了Rosen所提到的大交易。在英国和其他至少在理论上要求新闻媒体具备公正性的国家，电视与媒体的合流让这类规定显得有些过时。BBC的理事长 Mark Thompson在去年12月的一次研讨会上指出，能够引起论战并具备自己观点的新闻频道才“有说服力”，尽管BBC本身的新闻报道仍将保持客观中立。因特网也缩短了新闻周期，许多标题新闻都从智能手机或Twitter上即时发出，这也要求媒体进行即时的分析和观点论述。

Moreover, the internet makes it easier than ever to find and synthesise different views, says Krishna Bharat, the creator of Google News. The idea for the site occurred to him in the months after the attacks of September 11th 2001, when he became frustrated by the inefficiency of visiting lots of different websites to get a broader picture of the news. When news comes from multiple sources, a mix of strong opinions becomes more desirable. “It’s time to embrace the fact that certain news sources have a point of view, and that’s why they have the following they do,” says Mr Bharat. “I think there’s a place for all of them.” By undermining many of the traditional arguments for objectivity, the internet may thus cause a wider “Foxification” of news and a return to the more opinionated and partisan media landscape of the 18th and early 19th centuries. “Almost every country that has an open society is going to have some kind of opinion television programming,” says Mr Shine.

此外，在因特网上更容易找到并集成不同的观点，google新闻的创始人Krishna Bharat说。在911攻击事件后，他需要访问很多不同的网站来全方位了解关于该事件的消息，这种低效率让他抓狂，从而萌生了创建google新闻的想法。多个新闻来源迫使我们需要对各种有力的观点进行整合。“我们现在应该认识到，不同的新闻来源有着各自的观点，这也是他们接下来行为的原因，”Bharat说，“需要有一个地方把这些新闻集合起来。” 因特网在瓦解传统意义上公正性观念的同时，可能会带来新闻业更为广泛的“福克斯化”，并将媒体带回至18世纪和19世纪早期观点突出党派鲜明的媒体业环境中。Shine认为，“几乎所有社会开放的国家都会出现某种具有观点倾向性的电视节目”。

This does not mean that all news organisations should take overtly political positions. Mr Rosen is just one of many media watchers who think it is time to release journalists from the straitjacket of pretending that they do not have opinions—what he calls the “view from nowhere”. Journalists signal their impartiality by quoting people on opposing sides of an argument and avoid drawing conclusions, even when the facts are clear. “There have been times in the past when cnn has been criticised for being neutral—not only non-partisan, but not really having positions,” says Mr Whitaker. But lately, he says, “we have been stronger in taking a point of view when we think it is supported by our reporting and by facts.”

这并不是说各个新闻组织都要持有鲜明的政治立场。许多媒体观察人者都认为，是时候解除记者必须假装没有观点的紧箍咒了，而Rosen只是其中之一，他称这种观点为“从无处来的观点”。记者们为了表明自己的公正立场，不断引用争论双方的观点，却拒绝得出结论，即便事实已足够清晰。“cnn曾多次因其中立而受到批评——他们的观点不仅是无党派的，而且没有任何立场可言，” Whitaker说。但是最近他说，“如果我们认为报道和事实能够提供支持，我们会给出更为有力的观点。”