【原文题目】Media in the United States(part 2)：Uninformed population means harmful policies can go unaccountable
【中文题目】美国的媒体（第二部分）：民众信息匮乏意味着实行有害政策无需负责
【来 源】http://www.globalissues.org/article/163/media-in-the-united-states#globalissues-org
【原文作者】Anup Shah
【译 者】芦苇
【校 对】車幹
【声 明】译文为原创，转载务必注明译者及出处“独家网dooo.cc”。
【摘 要】你以为美国是新闻自由的？你以为美国人想知道什么就能知道什么？那你就错了。独家网为你奉献美国媒体研究系列文章。本期：为何美国的错误政策能够获得通过和执行？因为美国的媒体操控与国家公关和宣传如此强大，以至于美国人对国际事件获取的信息匮乏，成为十足的国际新闻“傻子”。何为民主？人民要说的算，而且要在充分获取信息的情况下说的算。美国人基于匮乏与错误信息基础上的选举投票并非民主。
【译 文】
美国的许多政策，尤其是外交政策，备受国际、美国社会内部的诟病。有人担忧美国因此而使自己与世界上其他国家疏远。下面这段摘录暗示了媒体对于热点问题的呈现能够影响到美国外交政策的建设性评论。

“只有在美国，你才能看到世界渴望美国来领导的报道。”一位匿名的英国外交高官最近如是评论道，“其他人读到的美国都是它的极度傲慢和单边主义。
——摘自乔纳森·波瓦，《处在与世界疏远危机中的美国》，1999年3月3日

上面这个摘录同时也概括说明了国际社会是如何看待美国的，以及美国的行为在国内是如何被解读的。然而，国际社会从完全不同的角度来解读美国的行动也有其正当的理由。

美国媒体对国际新闻报道少之又少。正如媒体频道（Media Channel）和赫芬顿邮报所指出的：皮尤研究中心最近对美国新闻业的调查结果显示，国际新闻的报道下降速度远超过其他任何话题。参与2007年调查的新闻编辑中有64%说他们的报纸已经减少了国际新闻的版幅。皮尤研究中心的报告指出，“严格说来，美国媒体在2007年报道的不是整个世界。去年，除了伊拉克，只对两个国家进行了很多报道——伊朗和巴基斯坦。”

不报道全球热点问题的现状令人堪忧，因为这最终会导致众多美国人视野狭窄，对许多重要的国际问题没有认识。在这种状况下，宣传就比较容易了，因为不管宣传人员说了什么，其他人都很难去质疑他，而且都认为宣传说的是真的。

大多数美国人仍然是从电视上获取新闻，但是电视上的新闻有限，电视快节奏和简明扼要的特点降低了新闻的广度和深度并忽略了本需要介绍的背景。相比之下，互联网已经超过传统的报纸，成为主要的新闻传播途径，但仍缺乏新闻的多样性。许多互联网站上的内容还是来自于传统渠道，通常是来自那些勉强苟活的报纸公司和媒体机构。

注意，尽管互联网可能即将超过传统报纸成为人们获取信息的来源，但电视新闻还是占据着主导地位：三分之二的美国人是从电视上获取新闻的。

皮尤研究中心的大众与媒体研究中心（People & the Press）在其他民意调查和研究小组中做的调查显示，大约三分之二的普通民众以电视作为获取国内、国际新闻的主要媒介，是依赖报纸获取新闻的人数的两倍多，比日益增长的依靠互联网获取信息的人数多一半。
——吉姆·罗比，《“阿拉伯之春”占据了电视播出的国际新闻》，国际新闻社，2012年1月2日

伊拉克战争开始后一年，即2004年3月，皮尤研究中心的皮尤全球态度项目为大众与媒体研究中心（ People & the Press）组织了一次大规模投票。投票在多国进行，包括西欧国家、穆斯林国家。结果显示，这些国家都越来越不信任美国，尤其是不信任总统乔治·布什。

而美国的受访者与世界上其他国家的受访者在许多问题上都存在较大的分歧，包括在其关键盟友——英国那里的受访者。正如1999年外交官在上文提到的，这项调查也指出了61%-84%的国外受访者认为美国外交政策的动机是自私的，然而70%的美国国内受访者则认为他们的外交政策也考虑了其他国家的意见的。毫不夸张地说，这种观念上的差异是很大的。可是为什么会有这样的鸿沟呢？

政治学助理教授南希·斯诺博士将她之前的工作描述成为美国新闻署的“传道者”。另外，在一次采访中她还讲述了美国人和世界上其他人是怎样看待美国媒体的：

公共外交是传道的一种委婉说法。尽管世界上的其他地方根据广告、全球覆盖率以及公关行业认为美国是一个最擅长宣传的国家，但我们美国自己并不认为自己是一个善于做宣传的国家。因为在美国公关专家的数量远远多于新闻记者。所以对美国国内和国外做宣扬美国的广告、宣传促销以及传播美国信息的工作已经有着悠久的历史。
——南希.斯诺博士，《美国新闻署幕后的传媒公司》，游击队新闻网（Guerilla News Network）

澳大利亚记者约翰·皮格尔也捕捉到了这一点。早在苏联解体以前，一群到美国旅行的记者在读过美国的报纸、看过美国的电视后吃惊地发现，几乎所有关于重大事件的观点都是一样的。其中一位记者说：“在我国，要想这样（所有重大事件新闻报道都高度一致），我们需要独裁，我们要禁锢民众，剔除了他们的“利爪”。你这里哪一样都没有，那美国是如何办到的呢？这其中的秘密何在？”
——约翰·皮格尔，《在世界上最自由的新闻界，人性化的报道源于其是否有利于美国权威》，新政治家（New Statesman），2001年2月20日。

尽管许多国家（即使并非全部）在某种程度上限制信息的传播，可是像美国这样的在国际舞台上已经很有影响力的国家也这样限制信息传播就很让人费解。美国人是为世界上最强大的国家制定政策的人，而这些政策的制订对国际上的诸多方面都会产生深远的影响。因此，美国人需要接受客观的报道。

运作良好的民主最主要的是要让民众在获取信息充分的基础上做出选择和决定。然而，正如2000年时的大选所见证的那样，媒体报道和论述中都出现了很多错误。

这种主流媒体与这个国家政治制度的这种不恰当关系让选民们缺乏相关信息，他们只能任由那些媒体无意义甚至更糟的政府宣传的摆布。这实际上已经侵蚀了民主的基本要求，即管理者不仅要获得被管理者的赞同，而且要让被管理者在获取信息充分的情况下赞同。
——本·百格蒂凯，《媒体垄断》（第六版）第192页，烽火出版社，2000年。

（注意，上述摘录中的书最早是在1983年出版的，但是仍然与当今时事紧密相关，可适用于2000年的美国大选以及与之相关的其他争论）。

【原 文】
Many US policies, especially foreign policies, have come under much sharp criticism from around the world as well as from various segments within American society. As a result, some fear that they are running the risk of alienating themselves from the rest of the world. A revealing quote hints that media portrayal of issues can affect the constructive criticism of American foreign policy:
“One reads about the world’s desire for American leadership only in the United States”, one anonymous well-placed British diplomat recently observed, “Everywhere else one reads about American arrogance and unilateralism.”
— Jonathan Power, America is in Danger of Alienating the World, March 3, 1999

The quote above also summarizes how America is viewed in the international community and how some of their actions are portrayed in the United States. Yet, the international community, often for very valid reasons, sees America’s actions differently.
International news coverage from US media is very poor. As noted by the Media Channel and Huffington Post, “According to the Pew Research Center’s recent study of American journalism, coverage of international events is declining more than any other subject. In the study of 2007, 64% of participating newspaper editors said their papers had reduced the space for international news. ‘In a strict sense, the American media did not in 2007 cover the world,’ says the Pew report. Beyond Iraq, only two countries received notable coverage last year — Iran and Pakistan.”

This non-coverage of global issues is worrying because so many American citizens end up getting a narrow view of many important world issues. In such a situation, it is easier for propagandists to say things that are harder to question and seem real.

The majority of US citizens still get their news from television, where limited headlines and sound-bites reduce the breadth, depth and context available. And while the Internet has surpassed traditional newspapers as a prime source of news, the diversity of news is still small; a lot of content for Internet sites come from a few traditional sources, usually those working in struggling newspaper companies and media outlets.

As a side note, although the Internet may be surpassing traditional newspapers as information sources, television news still dominates; some 2/3rds of Americans get their news from TV:

Surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press among other polling and research groups show that about two-thirds of the general public cite television as their main source for national and international news, more than twice the number of people who rely on newspapers, and about 50 percent more than the growing number of U.S. residents who rely on the Internet (43 percent).
— Jim Lobe, “Arab Spring” Dominated TV Foreign News in 2011, Inter Press Service, January 2, 2012

A year after the war on Iraq had started, March 2004 saw a large poll released by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) from the Pew Research Centre for the People & the Press. It looked at views in a number of countries, including some in western Europe, and some in Muslim countries, and found in all of them a growing mistrust of the United States, particularly President George Bush.

On many issues there was a wide gap between respondents in the U.S. versus respondents elsewhere, including key ally, Britain. And as the diplomat noted above in 1999, this poll also noted that 61 to 84% of respondents in other countries found the U.S. motives in foreign policy to be self-interested, while 70% of respondents in the United States thought their country did take other’s views into account. This divide in perceptions is large to say the least. But why is there such a gap?

Dr. Nancy Snow, an assistant professor of political science describes one of her previous jobs as being a “propagandist” for the U.S. Information Agency. In an interview, she also describes how Americans and the rest of the world often view the American media:

Public diplomacy is a euphemism for propaganda. In the United States, we don’t think of ourselves as a country that propagandizes, even though to the rest of the world we are seen as really the most propagandistic nation in terms of our advertising, in terms of our global reach, our public relations industry—we have more public relations professionals and consultants in the United States than we do news reporters. So there’s an entire history of advertising, promoting, and getting across the message of America both within and also outside of the United States.
— Dr. Nancy Snow, Propaganda Inc.: Behind the curtain at the U.S.I.A., an Interview with Guerilla News Network

Australian journalist John Pilger also captures this very well:
Long before the Soviet Union broke up, a group of Russian writers touring the United States were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. “In our country,” said one of them, “to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What’s the secret?”
— John Pilger, In the freest press on earth, humanity is reported in terms of its usefulness to US power, New Statesman, 20 February, 2001

While many countries—if not all—in some way suppress/distort information to some degree, the fact that a country as influential in the international arena such as the United States is also doing it is very disturbing. The people of this nation are the ones that can help shape the policies of the most powerful nation, thereby affecting many events around the world. For that to happen, they need to be able to receive objective reporting.

An integral part of a functioning democracy is that people are able to make informed choices and decisions. However, as the 2000 Election testified, there has been much amiss with the media coverage and discourse in general.

The inappropriate fit between the country’s major media and the country’s political system has starved voters of relevant information, leaving them at the mercy of paid political propaganda that is close to meaningless and often worse. It has eroded the central requirement of a democracy that those who are governed give not only their consent but their informed consent.
— Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), p. 192.

(Note that in the above quote, the book was originally published in 1983, but is still relevant to today and applicable to the 2000 Elections in the United States and the various controversies that accompanied it.)