【英语国际】政府资助会危及美国新闻自由吗？

LEE C. BOLLINGER

We have entered a momentous period in the history of the American press. The invention of new communications technologies-especially the Internet-is transforming the human capacity to speak, perhaps as monumentally as the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. This is facilitating the largest and fastest expansion of global economic growth in human history. Free speech and a free press are essential to a dynamic economy.

At the same time, however, the financial viability of the U.S. press has been shaken to its core. The proliferation of communications outlets has fractured the base of advertising and readers. Newsrooms have shrunk dramatically and foreign bureaus have been decimated. My best estimate is that there are presently only a few dozen full-time foreign correspondents from the U.S. covering all of China, despite the critical importance of that nation to our future.

Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are undertaking studies of ways to ensure the steep economic decline faced by newspapers and broadcast news does not deprive Americans of the essential information they need as citizens. One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

The idea of public funding for the press stirs deep unease in American culture. To many it seems inconsistent with our strong commitment, embodied in the First Amendment, to having a free press capable of speaking truth to power and to all of us. This press is a kind of public trust, a fourth branch of government. Can it be trusted when the state helps pay for it?

American journalism is not just the product of the free market, but of a hybrid system of private enterprise and public support. By the middle of the last century, daily newspapers were becoming natural monopolies in cities and communities across the country. Publishers and editors drew on the revenue to develop highly specialized expertise that enhanced coverage of economics, law, architecture, medicine, science and technology, foreign affairs and many other fields.

Meanwhile, the broadcast news industry was deliberately designed to have private owners operating within an elaborate system of public regulation, including requirements that stations cover public issues and expand the range of voices that could be heard. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld this system in the 1969 Red Lion decision as constitutional, even though it would have been entirely possible to limit government involvement simply to auctioning off the airwaves and letting the market dictate the news. In the 1960s, our network of public broadcasting was launched with direct public grants and a mission to produce high quality journalism free of government propaganda or censorship.

The institutions of the press we have inherited are the result of a mixed system of public and private cooperation. Trusting the market alone to provide all the news coverage we need would mean venturing into the unknown-a risky proposition with a vital public institution hanging in the balance.

Ironically, we already depend to some extent on publicly funded foreign news media for much of our international news-especially through broadcasts of the BBC and BBC World Service on PBS and NPR. Such news comes to us courtesy of British citizens who pay a TV license fee to support the BBC and taxes to support the World Service. The reliable public funding structure, as well as a set of professional norms that protect editorial freedom, has yielded a highly respected and globally powerful journalistic institution.

There are examples of other institutions in the U.S. where state support does not translate into official control. The most compelling are our public universities and our federal programs for dispensing billions of dollars annually for research. Those of us in public and private research universities care every bit as much about academic freedom as journalists care about a free press.

Yet-through a carefully designed system with peer review of grant-making, a strong culture of independence, and the protections afforded by the First Amendment-there have been strikingly few instances of government abuse. Indeed, the most problematic funding issues in academic research come from alliances with the corporate sector. This reinforces the point that all media systems, whether advertiser-based or governmental, come with potential editorial risks.

To take a very current example, we trust our great newspapers to collect millions of dollars in advertising from BP while reporting without fear or favor on the company's environmental record only because of a professional culture that insulates revenue from news judgment.

Or consider another area where we have well established mechanisms of government support for even the most oppositional views: defense counsel in our courts, where government-paid lawyers (including those in uniform military courts) will do their utmost to undermine cases brought by the government itself. Playing the role of calling our government to account is an accepted ethic of the legal profession despite the political hostility it can sometimes generate.

We should think about American journalism as a mixed system, where the mission is to get the balance right.

To me a key priority is to strengthen our public broadcasting role in the global arena. In today's rapidly globalizing and interconnected world, other countries are developing a strong media presence. In addition to the BBC, there is China's CCTV and Xinhua news, as well as Qatar's Al Jazeera. The U.S. government's international broadcasters, like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, were developed during the Cold War as tools of our anticommunist foreign policy. In a sign of how anachronistic our system is in a digital age, these broadcasters are legally forbidden from airing within the U.S.

This system needs to be revised and its resources consolidated and augmented with those of NPR and PBS to create an American World Service that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters. The goal would be an American broadcasting system with full journalistic independence that can provide the news we need. Let's demonstrate great journalism's essential role in a free and dynamic society.

Mr. Bollinger is president of Columbia University and author of 'Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century' (Oxford, 2010).

LEE C. BOLLINGER

我们已经进入美国新闻史上的一个重要时期。新型传播技术──特别是互联网──的发明，正改变着人类的言说能力，改变之大，或许正如15世纪印刷机的发明。这对人类历史上规模最大、速度最快的全球经济增长起着帮助作用。经济要充满活力，言论自由和新闻自由至关重要。

但与此同时，美国新闻业的财务能力已经到了伤筋动骨的地步。传播机构数量的迅速增多分散了广告和读者基础，采编业务已大幅萎缩，国外分支机构也被大量削减。中国对于我们的未来至关重要，但根据我最乐观的估计，当前从美国派出报道整个中国的全职外国记者，也就那么几十个人。

Martin Kozlowski联邦通讯委员会(Federal Communications Commission)和联邦贸易委员会(Federal Trade Commission)正在研究办法，看如何确保报纸与广播电视新闻业在经济上遭遇的深度下滑不至于让美国人失去他们作为公民所必需的至关重要的信息。一个正在研究的想法是加强新闻业的公共经费支持。

为新闻业提供公共经费支持的概念，在美国文化中引起了深刻的不安。在很多人看来，这似乎背离了我们体现于宪法第一修正案(First Amendment)中的一种坚定决心，即造就一个有能力面对强权和我们所有人讲出真相的自由的新闻行业。这样一种新闻行业属于某种公共信托机构(public trust)，政府的第四个部门（a fourth branch of government）。当国家参与为它出资的时候，它还可以被信任吗？

美国新闻业不仅是自由市场的产物，也是私营企业加公共支持这样一种混合制度的产物。到上世纪中叶，日报已成为全国各个城市和社区的天然垄断力量。出版人和编辑利用报纸收入打造了高度专业化的专业力量，进而加强了经济、法律、建筑、医药、科学技术、外交事务和其他很多领域的报道。

与此同时，广电新闻产业被有意设计成由私人业主运营，其在运营时要遵循一套复杂的公共监管制度，包括要求电台电视台报道公共议题，涵盖更广泛的声音。这套制度产生于1969年红狮公司(Red Lion)诉联邦通讯委员会一案的判决。尽管简单地通过拍卖电波频段、让市场来决定新闻内容，从而限制政府干预是完全有可能的，但最高法院(Supreme Court)还是一致裁定这套制度符合宪法精神。在20世纪60年代，我们的公共广电网络在获得直接公共拨款的情况下，肩负着生产高质量新闻、不受政府宣传或审查影响的使命而设立。

我们所继承的新闻机构，是一套公私合作混合制度的产物。只委托于市场，让它来提供我们所需要的全部新闻报道，那就相当于冒险闯入未知世界，会让一项至关重要的公共事业悬于不确定之境，所以是一种充满风险的想法。

听起来有些讽刺的是，我们已经在一定程度上依赖于接受公共经费支持的外国新闻媒体，尤其是美国公共电视网(PBS)和美国全国公共广播电台(NPR)平台上的英国广播公司（BBC）和BBC世界广播部(BBC World Service)，来获得我们的很大一部分国际新闻。这些新闻是英国公民提供给我们的，他们支付电视许可费支持BBC，并缴纳税款支持BBC世界广播部。这种可靠的公共经费支持架构，以及一系列保护采编自由的职业惯例，产生了一个受到高度尊重、在全世界都很有影响力的新闻机构。

美国其他一些机构得到政府资助，但并没有因此而受到官方控制，它们可视为榜样。最有说服力的是我们的公立大学，和我们每年散布数十亿美元用于研究的各种联邦计划。在公立和私立研究型大学里工作的人们对学术自由的关注，完全比得上新闻从业者对新闻自由的关注。

然而，有了一套精心设计的资金划拨同行评议制度（Peer-review），一种强大的独立文化，和第一修正案提供的保护，政府滥权的情况鲜有其例。学术研究中遇到麻烦最多的经费问题，事实上是产生于与企业部门的合作。这进一步证明，一切媒体制度都带有潜在的采编风险，不管其基础是广告商还是政府。

举个非常时新的例子。我们允许我们的优秀报纸一边能从英国石油(BP)收取数百万美元的广告费，一边不惧怕、不偏袒地报道这家公司的环保记录，而它们能这样做仅是出于一种让新闻判断不受财务收入影响的职业文化。

也不妨想想另外一个领域，在这个领域，我们建立了稳定的机制，让政府为最为不同的观点提供支持，那就是我们法庭上的辩护律师。政府付费的律师（包括整齐划一的军事法庭里的那些律师）会竭尽全力地反驳政府自身发起的官司。扮演问责政府的角色，虽然有时候可能引起政治上的敌意，但它属于一种受到认可的法律职业道德。

我们应该把美国新闻业想成是一种混合体系，关键在于掌握好平衡。

在我看来，当务之急是强化我们公共广播电视在国际舞台上的作用。在今天快速全球化、彼此联系的世界，其他国家正在发展一种强大的媒体平台。除了BBC，还有中国的CCTV和新华社，以及卡塔尔的半岛电视台(Al Jazeera)。美国政府的国际广电机构，如美国之音(Voice of America)和自由欧洲电台(Radio Free Europe)，都是在冷战期间作为反共外交政策工具而发展起来的。法律禁止这些机构在美国国内播放，说明我们的体系在数字时代是多么的过时。

这套体系需要修正，其资源需要同NPR和PBS的资源进行整合并扩大，从而造就一个“美国世界广播”（American World Service）来同BBC和国际上其他广电机构竞争。目标将是打造一个拥有完全新闻独立性、可以提供我们所需新闻的美国广电体系。让我们来证明，在一个自由而充满活动的社会，卓越的新闻事业会发挥怎样的关键作用。

（本文作者LEE C. BOLLINGER为哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)校长，撰有《Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century》(Oxford, 2010) 一书。）