robbyl

媒体多元与公民责任
----回应本台听友



由于西藏事件爆发和奥运火炬全球传递，全球聚焦中国与西藏，引发了全球部分华人对西方传媒报道的激烈反应。本台也收到了各种批评。对于大量的反应和此事件引发的各个层面的议题，我们当然难以一一谈及，我们在此简略讨论有关新闻自由与新闻失实的问题，也借此回应本台听友和网友，欢迎大家收听。

最近不少本台听友对我们的报道提出批评、建议，有因为最近的报道而失望者，有言辞激烈但仍不脱礼貌者，有义愤填膺而破口大骂者，当然也有一如既往鼓励本台同仁者。我们在此对各位听友表示谢意。无论是批评还是建言，都是大家对本台的关注。应该承认，西方传媒对中国人权等问题的这种较为集中的批评并不常见。正如我们曾经在“思潮与政见”专题节目里所谈过的，中国从来没有如此深入地卷入世界，西方也从未在有关中国民族主义感情的问题上对中国提出如此直接的批评，因而，中国听友对西方的反应十分激烈也是自在情理之中的事。本台欢迎批评，尊重听友，但绝不认为本台可以垄断报道、垄断言论、垄断真理。相反，作为一家媒体、一家之报道，本台希望汇入多元的媒体行列，为大家在众多视角之外，多提供一个视角，增加一种选择，使大家有更大的判断的空间。尽管我们有消息来源的局限，也有无法亲临现场的遗憾，但仍希望尽可能反映事实的多层次面向，多方声音。然而一家媒体不能构成多元，一种声音不能穷尽真相。正如只有一个党参加的选举不可能构成真正的民主选举，一家媒体也不可能提供选择的空间。

整体上看，虽然讨论空前热烈，但中国国内仍然只有极其少数的网友可以自由地加入这一大讨论。身在西方的听友或网友，可以自由收听我们的播音，也可以自由进出我们的网站，可以获得多方信息。经过比较、思考之后，无论是对本台还是对西方媒体的批评或鼓励均是新闻自由制度下的受惠者。而相反，大量的中国国内听友、网友既无可能获得足够的多方信息，又难以真正了解事实的多个面相。但是即使有着新闻封锁的巨大局限，此次有关传媒报道的大讨论也可以说乃是全球华人社会围绕奥运和西藏问题而展开的一场民主的大演练。拜全球化与互联网所赐，全球华人可以看到不同的视角、听到不同的声音，必须在多种不同的声音之间进行判断。

西方媒体受惠于新闻自由制度，这种自由的权利使其注定有报道不实的可能。问题是如何能够从制度上将错误减少到最低限度。迄今为止，言论自由、媒体多元是西方所找到的最能保证新闻真实的制度。自由的新闻制度建立于独立的媒体之上，多元的言论空间建立于受众综合各家、独立判断的基础之上。新闻自由同新闻垄断不共戴天，新闻自由不仅是专制制度的死敌，也将千千万万个社会个体看作独立的、理性的、具有判断能力的公民。新闻自由不仅可以冲垮专制对真理的垄断，也将愚民政策下的芸芸众生解放出来面对自己的责任。换句话说，对不实报道的揭露、批评，正是民主社会下公民责任的一部分。从这一意义上说，正如本台和其他的媒体均属于舆论多元的一部分一样，听友对本台或西方传媒的批评也正是听友诉诸其民主权利和履行其公民责任的具体实践。从全球化所促成的世界公共空间的视角上看，不仅海外华人，而且中国政府与中国媒体都自觉不自觉地被卷入到这一世界性的公共空间中来，成为不同声音中的一种，多元世界中的一种选择，舆论大家庭中的一员。

遗憾的是，至少在中国国内的舞台上，可以看到对西方传媒如对CNN或BBC的大量不实报道的揭露、批判，但却难以看到这些媒体本身的解释和辩词。没有竞争对手的选举不能说是一场真正的民主选举，封闭了对手的声音的批判当然不能言讨论。这样的批判、这样的讨论其实仍存记忆的中国人是十分熟悉的。文革期间，刘少奇、邓小平都是只许规规矩矩认罪而不能乱说乱动的批判对象。

民主体制之下的传媒将批判的目标指向政府和权力，不容忍权力的滥用。报道忠于事实，意味着报道必须独立于官方。官方的说法，即使是真实的，也必须得到独立媒体的检验，否则永远是官方的说辞。因而，有独立的媒体就必须有开放的社会，就必须取消新闻封锁，否则不仅政府不能取信于民，民众也没有判断的可能。从另一个角度，在激烈竞争下的媒体，迅速、严谨存在着一定的内在张力，媒体的公信力建立于对二者的全面把握。而对于公众说来，报道的偏差更需要多元的新闻制度来加以弥补。

在一个新闻垄断的条件下，民众面对一家之言，既无法进行判断，也无权进行谴责。长期受此种制度的压抑，可以形成一种逆来顺受、无所用心的惯性。一些政治学者将此称作“极权下的安逸”。来到自由世界，失去了专制压迫下的“安逸”，公民必须履行公民的职责。在获得自由之初，这种职责也会化为一种不能承受之轻。

听众朋友，今天我们暂谈到此。最近听友一些较普遍的反应还涉及到民族主义问题、主权与人权问题，批评或者批判的资格和正当性问题等等，我们会在今后的节目中继续同大家交流。

robbyl

Boycott Politicians, Not the Olympics

By Clarence Page


"The Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians," Avery Brundage, a past president of the International Olympic Committee, once said. We like to think so, don't we? Yet, the raucous rounds of "snatch the torch" that have disrupted this year's pre-Olympics festivities reveal a deeper truth: The Olympics are often politics by other means.

That's why an unusual right-left political coalition has called for President Bush to join some other major world leaders in skipping the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Democratic presidential contenders Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois called on Bush to avoid the ceremonies. Last week Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, joined in.

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a conservative Michigan Republican, has introduced a bill that would prevent the president and other U.S. government officials and employees from attending the Aug. 8 parade.
But Bush has tended to shrug off such notions as an unnecessary mix of politics with the purity of the Games. "I'm going to the Olympics. I view the Olympics as a sporting event," Mr Bush said in February. "You got the Dalai Lama crowd, you've got global warming folks, you've got Darfur. And I just - I am not going to go and use the Olympics as an opportunity to express my opinions to the Chinese people in a public way."

He was referring to pressure from the same protesters against China's brutal human rights policies in Tibet and elsewhere. Their protests have led to scuffles with police and unsmiling Chinese security agents in several of the 21 cities through which China's pre-Olympic torch relay is running.

Whether you support torch-snatching as a pre-Olympic event or not, this international embarrassment could hardly be aimed at a more deserving target than China. The country's list of offenses against humanity is long: political prisoners, jailed journalists, religious persecution - you name it, they do it. On the world scene, they have offered aid, weapons and comfort to a variety of human rights abusers. As Sudan's leading oil customer, they have given passive support to that country's genocidal policies in Darfur.

And as their eager trading partner and debtor, we, the United States, have been among China's leading enablers.

History shows Olympics to be more than just a "sporting event," as Bush calls it. Japan in 1964, South Korea in 1988 and the Soviet Union in 1980, among others, have used the Olympics to elevate their stature on the world stage.

The most memorably notorious example is Nazi Germany in 1936. Those were the games that created the torch relay as an international pageant to help polish the image of Adolf Hitler's murderous regime.

Ominously, Susan Bachrach, curator of an exhibit on the 1936 Olympics that opens at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on April 25, observed, "the Nazi torch ran through countries that Germany was about to conquer."

Brundage argued vigorously against calls for the United States to boycott the Berlin Olympics. Hitler successfully concealed the deadliest side of his regime, including the racist and anti-Semitic Nuremburg laws and the rounding up of Jews and others for the first of his death camps.

Yet, in the long run, what is most remembered from that Olympics are the four gold medals won by Jesse Owens, the black American track-and-field star who blew holes in Hitler's theories of Aryan supremacy.

It is with that positive memory in mind that I support the call for our president but not our country's athletes to boycott China's Olympics. We should give our athletes a chance to compete, as they have been training to do, and maybe present the sort of high-achieving model of achievement to the world that Jesse Owens did.

History shows the greatest value of the Olympic games is in their ability to rise above ordinary political nationalism to a higher level of human relations: a humanitarian, egalitarian and meritorious ideal of fair play that transcends boundaries of nations, races or tribes.

In ancient times it is said that nations put down their arms and took a break from war in order to compete in the Olympics. In more recent times, the Olympics encourage us to look beyond our home countries to learn about how much we have in common with the rest of the world - and how those commonalities can bridge our differences.

That's why we should support the Olympics and our athletes. Let the politicians stay home.

Page is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist specializing in urban issues. He is based in Washington, D.C. E-mail: cptime@aol.com
Copyright 2008, Tribune Media Services Inc.

robbyl

http://www.newsweek.com/id/131751/


WORLD VIEWFareed Zakaria

Don’t Feed China’s Nationalism

Public humiliation does not work nearly as well on the regime in Beijing as private pressure.

Apr 21, 2008 Issue


At first glance, China's recent crackdown in Tibet looks like a familiar storyline: a dictatorship represses its people. And of course that's part of the reality—as it often is in China. But on this issue, the communist regime is not in opposition to its people. The vast majority of Chinese have little sympathy for the Tibetan cause. To the extent that we can gauge public opinion in China and among its diaspora, ordinary Chinese are, if anything, critical of the Beijing government for being too easy on the Tibetans. The real struggle here is between a nationalist majority and an ethnic and religious minority looking to secure its rights.

In these circumstances, a boycott of the Olympics would have precisely the opposite effect that is intended. The regime in Beijing would become only more defensive and stubborn. The Chinese people would rally around the flag and see the West as trying to humiliate China in its first international moment of glory. (There are many suspicions that the United States cannot abide the prospect of a rising China.) For most Chinese, the Games are about the world's giving China respect, rather than bolstering the Communist Party's legitimacy.

For leaders to boycott the Games' opening ceremonies alone is an odd idea. Is the president of the United States supposed to travel to Beijing to attend the women's water-polo finals instead? (Britain's Gordon Brown, for instance, has said he'll attend the closing, but not the opening ceremonies.) Picking who will go to which event is trying to have it both ways, voting for the boycott before you vote against it. Some want to punish China for its association with the Sudanese government, which is perpetrating atrocities in Darfur. But to boycott Beijing's Games because it buys oil from Sudan carries the notion of responsibility too far. After all, the United States has much closer ties to Saudi Arabia, a medieval monarchy that has funded Islamic terror. Should the world boycott America for this relationship?

China's attitude toward Tibet is wrong and cruel, but, alas, not that unusual. Other nations, especially developing countries, have taken tough stands against what they perceive as separatist forces. A flourishing democracy like India has often responded to such movements by imposing martial law and suspending political and civil rights. The Turks for many decades crushed all Kurdish pleas for linguistic and ethnic autonomy. The democratically elected Russian government of Boris Yeltsin responded brutally to Chechen demands. Under Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir Putin, also elected, the Russian Army killed about 75,000 civilians in Chechnya, and leveled its capital. These actions were enthusiastically supported within Russia. It is particularly strange to see countries that launched no boycotts while Chechnya was being destroyed—and indeed welcomed Russia into the G8—now so outraged about the persecution of minorities. (In comparison, estimates are that over the past 20 years, China has jailed several hundred people in Tibet.)

On this issue, the Bush administration has so far followed a wiser course, forgoing the grandstanding taking place in Europe and on the campaign trail. It has been urging the Chinese government quietly but firmly to engage in serious discussions with the Dalai Lama. Diplomacy can be scoffed at, but every multinational business that has had success in persuading the Chinese government to change course will testify that public humiliation does not work nearly as well on the regime as private pressure.

Negotiating with the Dalai Lama is in Beijing's interest as well. It faces a restive population that lives in about 13 percent of the land area of China. Many Tibetans want independence. But the Dalai Lama has repeatedly said that he does not seek independence, only cultural autonomy. Even last week he rejected any boycott of the Olympics and urged his followers to engage in no violent protests whatsoever. If there were ever a leader of a separatist group whom one could negotiate with, he's it. And once the 72-year-old Dalai Lama passes from the scene, Beijing might have to deal with a far more unpredictable and radical Tibetan movement.

So why doesn't the Chinese regime see this? Beijing has a particular problem. Now that communism is dead, the Communist Party sees its legitimacy as linked to its role in promoting and defending Chinese nationalism. It is especially clumsy when it comes to such issues. Clever technocrats though they are, China's communist leaders—mostly engineers—have not had to refine their political skills as they have their economic touch. In the past they have stoked anti-Japanese and anti-American outbursts, only to panic that things were getting out of control and then reverse course. They fear that compromising over Tibet would set a precedent for the unraveling of the Chinese nation. China has grown and shrunk in size over the centuries, and its dynasties have often been judged by their success in preserving the country's geography.

In fact, in almost all cases—Turkey, India—granting autonomy to groups that press for it has in the end produced a more stable and peaceful national climate. But that is a lesson the Chinese government will have to learn for itself; it is unlikely to take instruction from outsiders. Its handling of the protests in Tibet is disgraceful. But humiliating the entire country over it would make matters worse.

s030604

Post by robbyl
媒体多元与公民责任
----回应本台听友
.......................................

遗憾的是，至少在中国国内的舞台上，可以看到对西方传媒如对CNN或BBC的大量不实报道的揭露、批判，但却难以看到这些媒体本身的解释和辩词。.............................

这就是我们听到或者看到的对歪曲报道和故意诋毁的解释和辩词！西方媒体本身就带着有色眼镜看待中国，雇佣的很多会中文的人来历本身就有问题，此次西藏暴乱事件，他们明显站在了人民的对立面，不但不躬身自省，还在继续强词夺理。而这些回应文章都是在转移话题，民主、自由完全成了他们的一块遮羞布而已！