展现“死亡”:一个悖论性的新闻报道领域

Representing Death in the News:A Paradoxical Report Field

展现"死亡",是一个高关注度与高争议度并存的新闻报道领域。本文从这一报道领域的悖论性入手,分析"死亡"新闻从新闻选择、新闻表现到传播动机与效果上的诸多矛盾,并探讨了"死亡"新闻与时代、文化、技术及深层社会观念之间的关系。本文研究发现,尽管展现"死亡"的新闻常常会产生争议,但这类新闻与生俱来的悖论性使得社会对新闻媒体的道德指责很难奏效,而增强对这一特性的理解,也许并不能消除争议,却可能有助于新闻界以更加自觉和自省的意识去展现"死亡",并获得社会的尊敬。

Representing death in the news is a paradoxical report field where a high degree of concerns and a high degree of controversy exist side by side. This article examines the paradox of the report field ,analyses controversial views on different issues such as selection, format and intention of news about death and also discusses the relationship between death news and different times（development of technology）cultural heterogeneity and deep social concepts. It shows that the paradoxical attribution rooted in such report field makes the moral criticism to the press hard to work. It suggests that journalists should represent death with more consciousness and self-examination to gain the public respect.