I'd like to start, if I may, with the story of the Paisley snail. On the evening of the 26th of August, 1928, May Donoghue took a train from Glasgow to the town of Paisley, seven miles east of the city, and there at the Wellmeadow Café, she had a Scots ice cream float, a mix of ice cream and ginger beer bought for her by a friend. The ginger beer came in a brown, opaque bottle labeled "D. Stevenson, Glen Lane, Paisley." She drank some of the ice cream float, but as the remaining ginger beer was poured into her tumbler, a decomposed snail floated to the surface of her glass. Three days later, she was admitted to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and diagnosed with severe gastroenteritis and shock.
如果可以的話, 我想從「佩斯利蝸牛」的故事 開始說起。 1928 年 8 月 26 日晚, 梅唐納修從格拉斯哥 坐火車來到佩斯利鎮, 鎮位於城市東邊, 離市中心七英里遠, 她在威爾梅朵咖啡館裡, 喝了一杯蘇格蘭冰淇淋蘇打, 那是由冰淇淋和薑汁啤酒混合製成 是她的一位朋友給她買的。 薑汁啤酒裝在一個棕色不透明的杯子裡 杯子上標著 「佩斯利鎮格蘭巷,D.史帝文森」 她喝了一點冰淇淋蘇打 但是當她把剩下的薑汁啤酒 倒進酒杯時 一隻腐死蝸牛 浮在水面 三天之後, 她被送進格拉斯哥皇家醫院 被診斷為嚴重的腸胃炎 以及休克。
The case of Donoghue vs. Stevenson that followed set a very important legal precedent: Stevenson, the manufacturer of the ginger beer, was held to have a clear duty of care towards May Donoghue, even though there was no contract between them, and, indeed, she hadn't even bought the drink. One of the judges, Lord Atkin, described it like this: You must take care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbor. Indeed, one wonders that without a duty of care, how many people would have had to suffer from gastroenteritis before Stevenson eventually went out of business.
接著的唐納修訴史帝文森案 立下了一個非常重要的先例: 判決指出薑汁啤酒製造商史帝文森 對梅唐納修負有 明確的謹慎責任 儘管他們之間沒有合同 甚至不是她去買啤酒 其中一個法官阿特金勳爵說: 在你可合理地預見損害到他人時, 就必須遵從謹慎的法律責任, 避免作出一些行為或疏忽行為。 我們甚至想知道 假如沒有謹慎責任的情況下 在史帝文森最終倒閉前, 還有多少人飽受腸胃炎之苦。
Now please hang on to that Paisley snail story, because it's an important principle. Last year, the Hansard Society, a nonpartisan charity which seeks to strengthen parliamentary democracy and encourage greater public involvement in politics published, alongside their annual audit of political engagement, an additional section devoted entirely to politics and the media. Here are a couple of rather depressing observations from that survey. Tabloid newspapers do not appear to advance the political citizenship of their readers, relative even to those who read no newspapers whatsoever. Tabloid-only readers are twice as likely to agree with a negative view of politics than readers of no newspapers. They're not just less politically engaged. They are consuming media that reinforces their negative evaluation of politics, thereby contributing to a fatalistic and cynical attitude to democracy and their own role within it. Little wonder that the report concluded that in this respect, the press, particularly the tabloids, appear not to be living up to the importance of their role in our democracy.
現在請記住佩斯利蝸牛的故事, 因為這是一個十分重要的原則。 去年,一個無黨派慈善機構 名為漢薩德學會, 試圖鞏固議會民主, 鼓勵公眾 更多介入政治發表看法 進而影響決策 出版年度政治參與度審計報告, 又發表了一個額外章節 整個都是跟政治和媒體有關。 在調查當中 有一些讓人頗為失望的觀察報告。 小報看來好像沒有 增進讀者的政治公民權 甚至和完全不讀報的人相比 也沒有。 只讀小報的讀者較易同意 政治的負面觀點, 比不讀報的高兩倍。 他們不僅對政治參與態度更消極 通過消費媒體 反而對政治增加負面評價 因此對民主和它們當中的角色 持宿命和憤世嫉俗的態度。 無怪乎,報告總結說 在這方面,媒體尤其是小報 看來好像沒有在民主中 起到應有的重要作用。
Now I doubt if anyone in this room would seriously challenge that view. But if Hansard are right, and they usually are, then we've got a very serious problem on our hands, and it's one that I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes focusing upon.
現在我不確實這房間裡 有沒有人認真挑戰那個觀點。 但是如果漢薩德學會是對的, 而他們通常都是對的, 那麼在我們手裡就有一個嚴重的問題 我想在接下來的 10 分鐘 集中討論。
Since the Paisley snail, and especially over the past decade or so, a great deal of thinking has been developed around the notion of a duty of care as it relates to a number of aspects of civil society. Generally a duty of care arises when one individual or a group of individuals undertakes an activity which has the potential to cause harm to another, either physically, mentally or economically. This is principally focused on obvious areas, such as our empathetic response to children and young people, to our service personnel, and to the elderly and infirm. It is seldom, if ever, extended to equally important arguments around the fragility of our present system of government, to the notion that honesty, accuracy and impartiality are fundamental to the process of building and embedding an informed, participatory democracy. And the more you think about it, the stranger that is.
自從佩斯利蝸牛後 尤其是過去十多年 很多人都在思考 謹慎責任這個概念 因為它和公民社會各方面也多有相關 謹慎責任的形成常見於以下情況 一個人或群眾進行一項活動時 有可能會對他人造成傷害 無論身體上、精神上的傷害 或經濟上的損失 主要集中在顯而易見的領域 例如我們對兒童和年輕人、 對服務員、對老年 或體弱者的同理心反應。 同樣重要的論點很難得或從來不會 擴展到政府現行制度弱點的議題 在建立和嵌入充分知情的、 民眾參與的民主過程中 誠實、精確和公正無私 是不可或缺的。 越深思這件事 這件事就越奇怪。
A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of opening a brand new school in the northeast of England. It had been renamed by its pupils as Academy 360. As I walked through their impressive, glass-covered atrium, in front of me, emblazoned on the wall in letters of fire was Marcus Aurelius's famous injunction: If it's not true, don't say it; if it's not right, don't do it. The head teacher saw me staring at it, and he said, "Oh, that's our school motto." On the train back to London, I couldn't get it out of my mind. I kept thinking, can it really have taken us over 2,000 years to come to terms with that simple notion as being our minimum expectation of each other? Isn't it time that we develop this concept of a duty of care and extended it to include a care for our shared but increasingly endangered democratic values? After all, the absence of a duty of care within many professions can all too easily amount to accusations of negligence, and that being the case, can we be really comfortable with the thought that we're in effect being negligent in respect of the health of our own societies and the values that necessarily underpin them? Could anyone honestly suggest, on the evidence, that the same media which Hansard so roundly condemned have taken sufficient care to avoid behaving in ways which they could reasonably have foreseen would be likely to undermine or even damage our inherently fragile democratic settlement.
幾年前,我有幸 參與英國東北部一間新學校的 開幕典禮 學生們把它重新命名為「學院 360 」 當我走過 令人印象深刻的玻璃吊頂中庭時 在我面前,牆上 以火焰字體刻著 馬可.奧里略的名言 不真實的話不必說; 不對的事不用做 校長看到我盯著這句話 就說:「噢,那是我們學校的校訓。」 在回倫敦的火車上 這句話一直在我的腦海裡揮之不去 我一直想,難道我們真的 需要二千多年的時間 才意識到這個簡單的概念 我們真的符合彼此的最低預期嗎? 難道現在不正是讓我們 發展出謹慎責任這個概念 並把它延伸出去,包括 關注於現時共享的 但逐漸受到威脅的民主價值? 畢竟,在很多行業裡 缺乏謹慎責任 就很容易被指控為疏忽 既然如此,我們事實上 在社會的健康發展 及其必要支持的價值觀方面有所疏忽 我們真的能夠接受這想法嗎? 面對證據,有誰能誠實的說, 漢薩德學會全面譴責的同一類媒體 負起足夠責任去避免作出某些行為, 而他們可合理地預見 這些行為可會削弱甚至毀壞 我們內在還很脆弱的民主。
Now there will be those who will argue that this could all too easily drift into a form of censorship, albeit self-censorship, but I don't buy that argument. It has to be possible to balance freedom of expression with wider moral and social responsibilities.
現在有些人會爭辯 這些太容易偏轉成 審查制度,儘管是自我審查 但我不接受那個論點。 我們一定可以 在言論自由和 更廣泛的道德和社會責任之間找到平衡
Let me explain why by taking the example from my own career as a filmmaker. Throughout that career, I never accepted that a filmmaker should set about putting their own work outside or above what he or she believed to be a decent set of values for their own life, their own family, and the future of the society in which we all live. I'd go further. A responsible filmmaker should never devalue their work to a point at which it becomes less than true to the world they themselves wish to inhabit. As I see it, filmmakers, journalists, even bloggers are all required to face up to the social expectations that come with combining the intrinsic power of their medium with their well-honed professional skills. Obviously this is not a mandated duty, but for the gifted filmmaker and the responsible journalist or even blogger, it strikes me as being utterly inescapable.
我想用我身為一個電影製作人 作一個簡單實例來說明原因。 在我職業生涯中,我從來都不接受 電影製作人該把作品 和自己對生活、家庭 以及我們對社會未來 的想法和價值觀 分隔開。 讓我進一步說明 一個負責的電影製作人 從來不該將自己作品的價值觀 降低到不能符合 自己對這個世界的期望 在我看來,電影製作人, 記者,甚至部落格作家 都需面對社會的期望 將媒體內蘊的力量 和他們優秀的職業技能結合起來 當然這不是一個強制的責任 但對於優秀的電影製作人, 負責任的記者 甚至部落格作家, 我認為是完全無法逃避的責任。
We should always remember that our notion of individual freedom and its partner, creative freedom, is comparatively new in the history of Western ideas, and for that reason, it's often undervalued and can be very quickly undermined. It's a prize easily lost, and once lost, once surrendered, it can prove very, very hard to reclaim. And its first line of defense has to be our own standards, not those enforced on us by a censor or legislation, our own standards and our own integrity. Our integrity as we deal with those with whom we work and our own standards as we operate within society. And these standards of ours need to be all of a piece with a sustainable social agenda. They're part of a collective responsibility, the responsibility of the artist or the journalist to deal with the world as it really is, and this, in turn, must go hand in hand with the responsibility of those governing society to also face up to that world, and not to be tempted to misappropriate the causes of its ills. Yet, as has become strikingly clear over the last couple of years, such responsibility has to a very great extent been abrogated by large sections of the media. And as a consequence, across the Western world, the over-simplistic policies of the parties of protest and their appeal to a largely disillusioned, older demographic, along with the apathy and obsession with the trivial that typifies at least some of the young, taken together, these and other similarly contemporary aberrations are threatening to squeeze the life out of active, informed debate and engagement, and I stress active.
我們應該牢記 個人自由,以其伴隨的創作自由 在西方思想史上 是相對很新的概念 因此,它通常被低估 也很容易被削弱 這是個很容易失去的禮物 一旦丟失,一旦屈服 就很難再拿回來了 而對它首要的保護 就是我們自己的標準 不是由審查或者通過立法 強加給我們的標準 而是我們自己的標準 和自己的道德準則 道德準則是指我們如何處理 選擇和誰一起工作 以及我們在社會裡採用的標準 而我們這些標準 需要統一及可持續的社會進程 他們屬於共同責任的一部份 這責任要求藝術家或記者 面對世界時如同真實的一樣 而這轉過來,也必須和 統治機構的責任聯繫起來 他們也需要面對真實的世界, 不應當被利用濫用職權 引起社會弊端的漏洞 但是,在過去幾年中 越來越驚人地清楚的是 這些責任在非常大的程度上 被大部份媒體拋棄了。 作為結果,在西方社會里 反對黨過分簡化的政策 他們主要吸引對社會不抱期望 年紀很大的群眾 冷漠而固執 至少對部份年輕人抱有偏見 所有的這些 當代的心理失常現象 正威脅 使積極的、信息通暢的辯論和參與失去活力 我強調是積極的
The most ardent of libertarians might argue that Donoghue v. Stevenson should have been thrown out of court and that Stevenson would eventually have gone out of business if he'd continued to sell ginger beer with snails in it. But most of us, I think, accept some small role for the state to enforce a duty of care, and the key word here is reasonable. Judges must ask, did they take reasonable care and could they have reasonably foreseen the consequences of their actions? Far from signifying overbearing state power, it's that small common sense test of reasonableness that I'd like us to apply to those in the media who, after all, set the tone and the content for much of our democratic discourse.
最激烈的自由主義者可能會爭辯說 唐納修訴史帝文森的案子不應被受理 只要史帝文森繼續賣有蝸牛的薑汁啤酒, 他最終會破產的 但我覺得,我們中的大部份人還是接受 國家採取一些行動來加強謹慎責任的 這裡的關鍵是合理的 法官們必須問的問題是, 他們有沒有採取合理的關照 以及他們是否能夠合理預測到 行為的後果? 不僅沒有顯示過強的政府力量 這是一個對合理性的常識小測試 我希望我們能將這個測試應用於媒體上 畢竟,媒體奠定了我們民主的 大部份基調和內容。
Democracy, in order to work, requires that reasonable men and women take the time to understand and debate difficult, sometimes complex issues, and they do so in an atmosphere which strives for the type of understanding that leads to, if not agreement, then at least a productive and workable compromise. Politics is about choices, and within those choices, politics is about priorities. It's about reconciling conflicting preferences wherever and whenever possibly based on fact. But if the facts themselves are distorted, the resolutions are likely only to create further conflict, with all the stresses and strains on society that inevitably follow. The media have to decide: Do they see their role as being to inflame or to inform? Because in the end, it comes down to a combination of trust and leadership.
爲了讓民主發揮作用, 需要理性的民眾花時間理解並爭論 那些困難而且有時很複雜的事務 他們需要在一個這樣的氛圍中進行: 這個環境下大家的理解是朝著 哪怕不是完全同意,但至少能 達成一種有效又能執行的妥協。 政治是選擇 在這些選擇裡面,政治講的是優先權 政治是無論何時何地,只要有可能 就在事實基礎上斡旋各種有衝突的選擇 但是如果事實本身就是扭曲的 解決方案很可能只能產生更多的矛盾 而社會上的壓力和衝突 就不可避免的會跟著產生 媒體需要決定: 他們視自己的角色是點燃衝突的人 還是提供信息的人 因為到了最後,歸根結底是 信任和領導力的結合。
Fifty years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy made two epoch-making speeches, the first on disarmament and the second on civil rights. The first led almost immediately to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the second led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, both of which represented giant leaps forward. Democracy, well-led and well-informed, can achieve very great things, but there's a precondition. We have to trust that those making those decisions are acting in the best interest not of themselves but of the whole of the people. We need factually-based options, clearly laid out, not those of a few powerful and potentially manipulative corporations pursuing their own frequently narrow agendas, but accurate, unprejudiced information with which to make our own judgments. If we want to provide decent, fulfilling lives for our children and our children's children, we need to exercise to the very greatest degree possible that duty of care for a vibrant, and hopefully a lasting, democracy. Thank you very much for listening to me. (Applause)
五十年前的這一週,約翰.甘迺迪總統 作了兩個名留青史的演講 第一個關於裁軍 第二個關於人權 第一個演講幾乎立刻導致 《禁止核試驗條約》的誕生 第二個演講帶來了 1964 年的人權法案 這兩件事情都代表著巨大的進步 民主,在良好領導和充分的信息溝通下 能夠達成偉大的成就 但是這是有前提的 我們必須信任那些做決定的人 是基於全人類的最大利益而非個人私利 的前提下行動 我們需要基於事實的選項 被清楚地列出來 而非少數幾個很有權力 而且可能會操縱事實的機構 去尋求他們自己通常很淺薄的目的 我們需要精確公正的信息 在此基礎上做我們自己的判斷 如果我們想要為我們的子孫後代 提供得體、有意義的生活 我們需要在最大程度上行使 對於這種活躍、希望也是持久的民主 的謹慎責任 謝謝你們聽我演講 (掌聲)