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【中文标题】灾难后，中国媒体被噤声
【原文标题】Media Blackout in China After Wreck
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】SHARON LaFRANIERE
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/world/asia/01crackdown.html?_r=1&ref=china
在中国浙江省东部双屿，7月23日动车追尾事故现场，家人焚香哀悼遇难者。
几天以来，公众对上个月发生的动车追尾事故和政府的反应表示出强烈的愤慨。中国当局已经暗中对媒体报道进行封锁，只允许报道一些正面消息和政府官方发布的新闻。
周五晚上，这道来自共产党宣传部的突如其来的命令，让报社的编辑措手不及。他们手忙脚乱地撤掉周六报纸上有关事故调查和相关评论的文章，换上卡通和其它不相关的内容。主流网站也删除了事故相关报道和视频的链接。发生在浙江省温州附近的事故共造成40人死亡，192人受伤。
政府让媒体噤声的这个决定激起了网民不同寻常的激烈反对。对很多中国人来说，723动车事故集中反应了人们关注的一些问题，就是政府是否在牺牲生命和安全来换取科技的高速发展，以及是否在用宣传手段和保密为借口掩盖技术失败的事实。
政府的行为就像近年来发生的一系列有关健康和安全的丑闻一样，包括2008年四川地震中建筑质量低劣的学校。政府迫不及待地压制呼吁的声音，因为如果任其发展，恐怕会形成无法控制的社会动乱。
数千万中国人在中国版本的推特上发布消息，质问为什么两列火车会相撞；救援工作是否到位；为什么现场的照片显示，在调查人员开展工作之前，车体就被埋入坑中。政府管控的媒体一开始试图轻描淡写地敷衍相关报道，后来也开始探究事件发生的原因和政府的处理方式。
政府监察人员当然没有有效的方法来控制微博上喧嚣的讨论声音，于是他们禁止了传统新闻媒体上的相关报道。
数十位记者被媒体噤声的命令所激怒，他们在网上发布消息称，由于大多重大问题还没有得到澄清，他们不可能接受这样的命令。政府曾经把修建高速列车作为非常重要的一项工作，促成了世界最大规模的群众工程。
广州报刊《南方都市报》的一位编辑周五在网上写道：“今晚，数百家报刊改换了头版；数千名记者撤回了自己的报道；数万个灵魂依然无法安息；数亿个事实真相被埋没。这个国家因无数罪恶之手而蒙羞。”他在新浪微博上的发言随后被删除。
另一位记者写道：“我的报道今天不会被发表了，似乎我需要写点别的东西。我宁可让这张白纸上只有两个字——‘无语’。”
中国记者这种团结的行为是极少见的，他们全部被笼罩在当局的宣传机制之下，有些在国有的出版机构工作，有些在私人媒体工作，后者一般言论更大胆一些。
北京的《经济观察报》是一份著名的周刊杂志，它并没有理会这条禁令，在周六发表了9页与事件相关的报道。报道把铁道部描述成一个不受任何控制的机构；从十几名幸存者的角度重现了温州事故的过程；明确指出政府控制的官方媒体没有在事件发生的第一时间给予报道。
《经济观察报》的一名记者说，当接到命令时，样稿已经交付印刷了。
但是更多的媒体还是表示服从。《21世纪经济报道》和《中国商业周刊》的编辑说他们撤掉了8页的报道；《京华时报》撤掉了4页的报道。据一位遇难者的妻子说，其中被丢弃的一篇报道题目是“他们不是奇迹”。这句话指的是当局和国有媒体大肆宣传的一个救援案例——一名儿童在事故发生21个小时后获救，当时所有救援人员都已经放弃了希望，并且接到了撤离的命令。
北京的一位编辑说：“我们总共接到了三通电话。第一个电话大约是在晚上9点，命令我们尽可能‘冷处理’对温州事件的报道。一个小时之后，报社被通知‘只可以发表新华社的通讯内容，不可以发布自己获得的消息，而且不能有评论和分析。’”这位编辑指的是官方的新闻机构。第三通电话是在午夜，命令所有对事件的报道不可以出现在首页。
据一位因担心报复而不愿意透露姓名的编辑说，当局甚至还推迟发表新华社编辑的一篇文章，该文章主要关注铁道部无法回应有关事故的一系列问题。
香港记者协会在其网站上声明，直到星期二，温家宝总理在温州举行的新闻发布会上才宣称：“对事故的调查要公开、透明、接受群众的监督”。
国有新闻媒体起初摆出一幅漠不关心的姿态，但近几天表现得越来越果敢。部分原因是受到了网民们的激励，他们整个星期都在用类似推特的这个不超过140个字符的网络工具来绕过主流媒体。
但是已经有一些人为此付出了代价。中国国有电视网络中央电视台的一档新闻节目的制片人，据说因为在事件发生两天之后的一期节目中有比较犀利的内容而受到制裁。一位同事说，有谣言说制片人已经被解雇，并没有这回事，但他拒绝继续透露细节。
在这期节目的中，主持人问到：“如果乘客人人自危，我们还需要这么快的速度吗？我们能喝到一杯安全的牛奶吗？我们能住在一栋不会倒塌的房子中吗？中国，请放慢你的脚步吧。如果你跑得太快，人民的灵魂会追不上你的步伐。”
（译者注：邱启明、肖艳在《24小时》中的原话如下：“如果没有人的安全，这样的速度我们要不要？比方说，能不能让我们喝一杯放心的牛奶，能不能让我们住一套屹立不倒的楼房，能不能让我们城市里条条大马路不要出现突然的坍塌，能不能让我们坐一趟安全抵达的列车，能不能在发生重特大事故的时候先别把车头埋掉……能不能让人们的幸福享有最基本的安全感？中国，请你放慢速度的脚步！走得太快，不要把人们的灵魂落在后面。”）
原文：
Family members lit and left sticks of incense as they mourned victims who died in the July 23 high-speed train crash at the accident scene in Shuangyu in eastern China's Zhejiang province.
BEIJING — After days of growing public fury over last month’s high-speed train crash and the government’s reaction, Chinese authorities have enacted a virtual news blackout on the disaster except for positive stories or information officially released by the government.
The sudden order from the Communist Party’s publicity department, handed down late Friday, forced newspaper editors to frantically tear up pages of their Saturday editions, replacing investigative articles and commentaries about the accident that killed 40 people in eastern China with cartoons or unrelated features. Major Internet portals removed links to news reports or videos related to the crash near Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province, in which 192 people were also hurt.
The government’s decision to muzzle the media followed a remarkable outpouring of online criticism of the government over the July 23 accident. For many in China, the train wreck has crystallized concerns about whether the government is sacrificing people’s lives and safety in pursuit of breakneck development and is cloaking its failures in secrecy or propaganda.
As it did in other recent scandals over health or safety, like the collapse of poorly built schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the government has moved aggressively to shut down an outcry that, if left unchecked, might spiral into social unrest beyond its control.
Tens of millions of Chinese have posted messages on the Chinese equivalents of Twitter questioning why the two high-speed trains crashed, whether the rescue effort was bungled and why images from the site showed wrecked train cars being buried in pits even before investigators began their work. After initially playing down the event, the state-run media also began to challenge why the accident occurred and how the government had handled it.
While the government censors have no easy way to control the rising tide of microblog posts, they curtailed discussion of the issue in the traditional news media.
Outraged by the order to silence themselves, dozens of journalists insisted in online messages that given the many troubling questions that remain, it was almost impossible to swallow the directives. The government has placed huge importance on the construction of high-speed rail, mounting the world’s largest public works project.
“Tonight, hundreds of papers are replacing their pages; thousands of reporters are having their stories retracted; tens of thousands of ghosts cannot rest in peace; hundreds of millions of truths are being covered up,” the editor of Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper based in Guangzhou, wrote Friday. “This country is being humiliated by numerous evil hands.” His post, on the site Sina Weibo, was later deleted.
“My story will not go to print today and looks like I will have to write something else,” wrote another journalist. “I’d rather leave the page blank with one word — ‘speechless.’ ”
It was a rare display of unity among Chinese journalists. All are under the thumb of propaganda authorities, but some work for state-owned publications while others work for privately owned media outlets that are typically more daring.
One prominent weekly, the Beijing-based Economic Observer, ignored the directive, rolling out nine pages of coverage of the accident in its Saturday edition. The report described the Railway Ministry as a runaway operation; reconstructed the events in Wenzhou from the viewpoint of dozens of survivors; and examined the failure of the official, state-operated media to report the accident when it occurred.
One of the Economic Observer’s journalists said the pages were already printed when the orders came.
But many others paid heed: editors said the 21st Century Business Herald and China Business Journal each tore up eight pages of articles while The Beijing Times jettisoned four pages. One discarded article, based on the account of the wife of one victim, was titled: “There was no miracle for them.” The headline was a pointed reference to a case that has been relentlessly trumpeted by officials and the state-run press — the rescue of a toddler 21 hours after the crash, after rescuers had given up all hope and been told to quit.
“There were three calls,” one editor in Beijing said. “The first came around 9 p.m., ordering us to ‘cool down’ coverage of the Wenzhou accident as much as possible.” An hour later, the newspaper was instructed “to print only Xinhua’s wire and not to print anything we had gotten ourselves. No comments, no analysis,” the editor said, referring to the official news agency. A third call at midnight ordered the accident coverage off the front page.
The authorities even postponed the publication of an article prepared by Xinhua, according to one editor who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions. That report focused on the Railway Ministry’s failure to answer a series of questions about the crash.
On its Web site, the Hong Kong Journalists Association protested, noting that only Thursday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, speaking at a news conference in Wenzhou, had insisted that the “investigation into the accident should be open, transparent and monitored by the public.”
After initially playing down the accident, the state-run news media had grown more assertive in recent days. They were invigorated in part by the so-called netizens who all week staged an end run around the mainstream press with 140-character updates on China’s Twitter equivalents.
But some may have paid a price: the producer of one news program on CCTV, China’s state-owned television network, was reportedly reprimanded after one hard-hitting segment two days after the accident. A colleague said rumors the producer was fired were false, but declined to describe the repercussions.
In that segment, the host of the program asked: “If nobody can be safe, do we still want this speed? Can we drink a glass of milk that’s safe? Can we stay in an apartment that will not collapse?”
“China, please slow down,” the host said. “If you’re too fast, you may leave the souls of your people behind.” |
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发表于 2011-8-1 15:40
