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Unit 3 What Is News?
第三单元 新闻是什么？
Neil Postman and Steve Powers
尼尔·波兹曼，史蒂夫·鲍尔斯
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.
所有人都会提起新闻，到底新闻是什么？之所以讨论这个问题，是因为如若观众不去思考这个问题，就只会轻易接受别人的定义——比如电视台新闻主任的定义，或者更糟，大广告商的定义——这是非常危脸的。无论如何，这不是个简单的问题，甚至可能很多记者和广告商都没有深入思考过这个问题。
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?
简单点说，新闻的定义可以仿照奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯大法官关于法律的著名定义。霍姆斯说，什么是法律？法院说什么是法律就是法律。如此而已，岂有它哉。同样，我们也可以说，电视新闻负责人和新闻记者们说什么是新闻也就是新闻。换言之，当你打开电视机观看新闻联播或本地新闻节目的时候，不管上面讲些什么，根据定义，这就是新闻。但是，如果我们接受这种定义方式，我们依据什么可以认为所获得的信息不够全面？或者本该报道的消息并没有报道？或者同一类消息报道过量？又或者记者的报道带有太多偏见？
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".
诸如此类的异议一多，我们就应该明白新闻报道并没有满足我们所有人的需求。事实上，大多数人都能意识到这点，只是并没有完全清醒地认识到。当被问及“什么是新闻？”时，人们最常见的回答是“每天发生的事”。这其实是一个很糟糕的答案，即使是回答者本人都能很轻易地发觉每天有不计其数的亊情发生，包括早餐的内容这种在任何意义上都不能算是新闻的事情。因此，在修改答案的时候，他们往往会加上新闻“是每天发生的、重要又有趣的事情”。这当然有些帮助，但是到底什么是“重要或有趣的事情”，这点如何判断？这个问题仍然没有解决。可以说，在这些人的意识中，对他们来讲“重要或有趣的事情”就是他们对于新闻的定义。
