媒体专业主义的困境与社会秩序的维护——“凯利事件”背后的媒体权威与法律权威

The Dilemma of Media Professionalism and Maintenance of Social Order: Media Authority and Legal Authority

“凯利事件”所引发的英国政府与公共服务广播BBC的对峙 ,导致BBC作为一个机构和一种理念都陷入了严重的生存危机。BBC所引以为豪、并且被大众普遍接受的“中立、客观、独立”的原则在层层盘问、质询之下显示出其脆弱、矛盾的理念基础。本文将借“凯利事件”逐个分析“中立、客观、独立”这些通常不被置疑的媒体专业主义元叙事背后的历史、话语、权力的构建因素 ,解构其普遍主义的神话。本文认为 ,媒体专业主义所规定的原则只是在特定社会历史条件下主导社会机构之间形成的意识形态合意 ,在极端事件的参照中便显示出其本体论合法性的危机。法律的介入使得危机得以暂时平复 ,并且恢复了现存秩序。但它并没有 ,实际上也无法解决现存秩序所依据的合法性理念已经失去普遍性共识这一深层次的危机 。

The death of Dr. Kelly and the serious confrontation between the British government and BBC have led to a crisis of survival for the BBC, both as an institution and as an idea. The taken-for-granted principles of media professionalism have shown to be weak and self-contradictory under extreme circumstances. This paper will contextualize the meta-narratives of “impartiality, objectivity and independence' from the vantage points of history, discourse and power, and try to demystify their claimed universalism. The principles set up by media professionalism are ideological consensus maintained among dominant social institutions under specific historical conditions. Thus, their ontological legitimacy is easily in crisis when the media are forced to stress these principles by extreme events. The intervention of law temporarily settled the crisis and restored social order, but it did not, and could not, resolve the deeper crisis of the loss of general consensus over the present constitution of order. It only used the authority and broader consensus of law to suspend the crisis.