00:12

Five years ago, I had my dream job. I was a foreign correspondent in the Middle East reporting for ABC News. But there was a crack in the wall, a problem with our industry, that I felt we needed to fix. You see, I got to the Middle East right around the end of 2007, which was just around the midpoint of the Iraq War. But by the time I got there, it was already nearly impossible to find stories about Iraq on air. Coverage had dropped across the board, across networks. And of the stories that did make it, more than 80 percent of them were about us. We were missing the stories about Iraq, the people who live there, and what was happening to them under the weight of the war.

01:00

Afghanistan had already fallen off the agenda. There were less than one percent of all news stories in 2008 that went to the war in Afghanistan. It was the longest war in US history, but information was so scarce that schoolteachers we spoke to told us they had trouble explaining to their students what we were doing there, when those students had parents who were fighting and sometimes dying overseas.

01:28

We had drawn a blank, and it wasn't just Iraq and Afghanistan. From conflict zones to climate change to all sorts of issues around crises in public health, we were missing what I call the species-level issues, because as a species, they could actually sink us. And by failing to understand the complex issues of our time, we were facing certain practical implications. How were we going to solve problems that we didn't fundamentally understand, that we couldn't track in real time, and where the people working on the issues were invisible to us and sometimes invisible to each other?

02:09

When you look back on Iraq, those years when we were missing the story, were the years when the society was falling apart, when we were setting the conditions for what would become the rise of ISIS, the ISIS takeover of Mosul and terrorist violence that would spread beyond Iraq's borders to the rest of the world.

02:29

Just around that time where I was making that observation, I looked across the border of Iraq and noticed there was another story we were missing: the war in Syria. If you were a Middle-East specialist, you knew that Syria was that important from the start. But it ended up being, really, one of the forgotten stories of the Arab Spring. I saw the implications up front. Syria is intimately tied to regional security, to global stability. I felt like we couldn't let that become another one of the stories we left behind.

03:04

So I left my big TV job to start a website, called "Syria Deeply." It was designed to be a news and information source that made it easier to understand a complex issue, and for the past four years, it's been a resource for policymakers and professionals working on the conflict in Syria. We built a business model based on consistent, high-quality information, and convening the top minds on the issue. And we found it was a model that scaled. We got passionate requests to do other things "Deeply." So we started to work our way down the list.

03:42

I'm just one of many entrepreneurs, and we are just one of many start-ups trying to fix what's wrong with news. All of us in the trenches know that something is wrong with the news industry. It's broken. Trust in the media has hit an all-time low. And the statistic you're seeing up there is from September -- it's arguably gotten worse. But we can fix this. We can fix the news. I know that that's true. You can call me an idealist; I call myself an industrious optimist. And I know there are a lot of us out there. We have ideas for how to make things better, and I want to share three of them that we've picked up in our own work.

04:28

Idea number one: we need news that's built on deep-domain knowledge. Given the waves and waves of layoffs at newsrooms across the country, we've lost the art of specialization. Beat reporting is an endangered thing. When it comes to foreign news, the way we can fix that is by working with more local journalists, treating them like our partners and collaborators, not just fixers who fetch us phone numbers and sound bites. Our local reporters in Syria and across Africa and across Asia bring us stories that we certainly would not have found on our own. Like this one from the suburbs of Damascus, about a wheelchair race that gave hope to those wounded in the war. Or this one from Sierra Leone, about a local chief who curbed the spread of Ebola by self-organizing a quarantine in his district. Or this one from the border of Pakistan, about Afghan refugees being forced to return home before they are ready, under the threat of police intimidation. Our local journalists are our mentors. They teach us something new every day, and they bring us stories that are important for all of us to know.

05:37

Idea number two: we need a kind of Hippocratic oath for the news industry, a pledge to first do no harm.

05:48

Journalists need to be tough. We need to speak truth to power, but we also need to be responsible. We need to live up to our own ideals, and we need to recognize when what we're doing could potentially harm society, where we lose track of journalism as a public service.

06:06

I watched us cover the Ebola crisis. We launched Ebola Deeply. We did our best. But what we saw was a public that was flooded with hysterical and sensational coverage, sometimes inaccurate, sometimes completely wrong. Public health experts tell me that that actually cost us in human lives, because by sparking more panic and by sometimes getting the facts wrong, we made it harder for people to resolve what was actually happening on the ground. All that noise made it harder to make the right decisions.

06:36

We can do better as an industry, but it requires us recognizing how we got it wrong last time, and deciding not to go that way next time. It's a choice. We have to resist the temptation to use fear for ratings. And that decision has to be made in the individual newsroom and with the individual news executive. Because the next deadly virus that comes around could be much worse and the consequences much higher, if we do what we did last time; if our reporting isn't responsible and it isn't right.

07:11

The third idea? We need to embrace complexity if we want to make sense of a complex world. Embrace complexity --

07:21

not treat the world simplistically, because simple isn't accurate. We live in a complex world. News is adult education. It's our job as journalists to get elbow deep in complexity and to find new ways to make it easier for everyone else to understand. If we don't do that, if we pretend there are just simple answers, we're leading everyone off a steep cliff. Understanding complexity is the only way to know the real threats that are around the corner. It's our responsibility to translate those threats and to help you understand what's real, so you can be prepared and know what it takes to be ready for what comes next.

08:02

I am an industrious optimist. I do believe we can fix what's broken. We all want to. There are great journalists out there doing great work -- we just need new formats. I honestly believe this is a time of reawakening, reimagining what we can do. I believe we can fix what's broken. I know we can fix the news. I know it's worth trying, and I truly believe that in the end, we're going to get this right.

08:30

Thank you.

00:12

五年前，我得到了梦寐以求的工作。 我任职美国广播公司新闻的 驻中东特派员。 但我发现了牆上的一道缺口， 即是我们的行业出了问题， 我认为有必要去修补。 我在 2007 年末抵达中东， 那时伊拉克战争已经 打了一半。 但在我抵达时，已经几乎不可能 找到可供广播的伊拉克新闻故事。 各大电视网络报导伊拉克的篇幅 一律下跌。 那些得以广播出来的新闻故事当中， 超过 80% 是关于我方的。 我们不去报导伊拉克的新闻故事、 关于当地居民的新闻故事， 以及他们在战争重压下 何去何从的新闻故事。

01:00

阿富汗则早已不在报导议题中。 在 2008 年的所有新闻故事中 不到 1% 是关于阿富汗战争。 这是美国史上历时最长的战争， 但相关资讯却是如此稀少， 就连学校老师也向我们表示， 他们很难向学生解释 究竟我们在阿富汗做些什么， 而这些学生的父母 都在海外战斗甚或殉职。

01:28

我们得不到任何相关资讯， 而这不只是伊拉克和阿富汗。 从衝突地区到气候改变， 到关乎公共卫生危机的各类议题， 我们无法报导我称为 「物种层面的议题」， 因为这些议题都可以拖垮 我们整个人类物种。 无法了解当代的複杂议题， 我们就得面对这带来的 若干实际影响。 我们怎么解决得了问题， 要是我们没有从根本了解问题、 无法同步追踪问题， 而且处理这些複杂议题的人 都是我们看不见， 甚或互相看不见的人？

02:09

回首看看伊拉克， 我们无法报导任何有关 当地新闻故事的那些年， 就是当地社会分崩离析的时期， 而我们也造就了 让伊斯兰国得以掘起的条件， 让伊斯兰国得以佔据摩苏尔， 让恐怖主义暴力得以跨过 伊拉克边界遍布全世界。

02:29

当我正在进行观察的时候， 我望向伊拉克边界的另一边， 发现我们也无法报导 另一则新闻故事： 敍利亚战争。 如果各位是中东问题专家， 一定知道敍利亚 从一开始就相当重要。 但结果却是敍利亚 是在阿拉伯之春 被遗忘的新闻故事之一。 我亲眼目睹这带来的影响。 敍利亚与地区安全以至全球安全 息息相关。 我觉得不应该任由敍利亚变成 另一则我们不报导的新闻故事。

03:04

所以我辞掉了大电视台的工作， 创立网站「深度敍利亚」。 这网站旨在作为新闻及资讯来源， 使理解一则複杂议题变得更容易， 而它在过去四年来已经成为 处理敍利亚衝突的政策制定者 和专业人士的资讯来源。 我们的经营模式是 建基于具连贯性、高品质的资讯， 以及汇聚有关该议题的一流见解。 我们发现这个模式可以扩展。 有人热切请求我们 「深度」探讨其他议题。 于是我们开始探讨清单上各个议题。

03:42

我和众多企业家， 我们和很多创投公司， 都尝试补救新闻业出现的错误。 我们在前线工作的人都知道 新闻业的确出现了一些问题。 它已经败坏。 传媒公信力跌至历年新低。 各位在这裡见到的统计数字 是在九月， 现在情况恐怕更差。 但我们可以补救。 我们可以补救新闻业。 我知道这会成真。 各位可以说我是理想主义者， 我就自称勤奋的乐观主义者。 我知道外面有很多像我一样的人。 我们有办法使事情变好， 而我想介绍我们找出的 其中三项办法。

04:28

办法一： 我们需要建基于 深入领域知识的新闻。 由于全国各地新闻媒体 裁员一浪接一浪， 我们已经失去了专门报导的艺术。 「路线採访」濒临绝种。 在海外新闻方面， 我们的补救方法就是 跟更多本地新闻从业员合作， 视他们为合作伙伴， 而不只是帮我们取得 电话号码和原声摘要的仲介人。 我们在敍利亚以至 亚、非各地的本地记者 给我们找来我们自己 肯定找不来的新闻故事。 就像这则在大马士革市郊的新闻， 关于一场 给予战乱伤患希望的轮椅竞赛。 又或者这则在塞拉里昂的新闻， 关于一名当地首领 自发隔离自己的区域 以阻止伊波拉病毒蔓延。 又或者这则在巴基斯坦边境的新闻， 关于阿富汗难民在未淮备好、 被警察胁逼的情况下 被遣返家乡。 本地新闻从业员是我们的师友， 每一天都有新东西教给我们， 也给我们带来所有人都应该 知道的重要新闻故事。

05:37

办法二： 我们需要给新闻行业订立一种 希波克拉底誓词， 即是承诺不造成任何伤害。

05:48

新闻从业员需要不屈不挠。 我们要向当权者说出真相， 但我们也要为自己负责。 我们要按自己的理想行事， 也要明白 如果我们忘记新闻是一种公共服务， 我们所做的有可能损害社会。

06:06

我密切留意我们怎样报导 伊波拉危机。 我们成立「深度伊波拉」， 并全力以赴。 但我们见到公众 被排山倒海般的歇斯底里 和煽情报导淹没， 它们有时不淮确，有时完全错误。 公共卫生专家告诉我， 这样其实会赔上人命， 因为引发更多恐慌甚或把事实弄错， 使人们更难解决 实地发生的事。 所有这些杂音使人更难 作出正确的决定。

06:36

我们作为一个行业可以做得更好， 但必须明白我们上次何以犯错， 并决心下次不再重蹈覆辙。 这完全由你决定。 我们要抵挡诱惑， 不用恐惧刺激收视率。 每个新闻部、每位新闻行政人员 都要作出这样决定。 因为如果我们重蹈覆辙， 如果我们的报导不负责任、 不尽不实， 下一个来袭的致命病毒 可能更恶劣，带来更严重的后果。

07:11

办法三？ 若要理解错综複杂的世界， 我们就要拥抱複杂。 拥抱複杂……

07:21

不把世界简化， 因为简单就是不淮确。 我们活在错综複杂的世界。 新闻是成人教育。 我们作为新闻从业员 有责任抽丝剥茧， 找出新方法使任何人更易理解。 如果我们做不到这一点， 如果我们佯装简单答案就在眼前， 我们就像带领所有人去跳悬崖。 理解複杂关系是 知道真实威胁近在咫尺的 唯一方法。 我们的责任是把这些威胁 以常人话语说出来， 帮助各位明白什么是真实的， 让你淮备好并知道怎样淮备 下一个问题的来临。

08:02

我是一名勤奋的乐观主义者。 我的确相信可以补救已败坏的东西。 我们每个人都想。 表现卓越的优秀新闻从业员 俯拾皆是， 而我们需要的只是新模式。 我确信现在是时候重新醒觉、 重新想像我们可以做什么。 我相信找们可以补救已败坏的东西。 我知道我们可以补救新闻业。 我知道这是值得尝试的， 并衷心相信我们直到最后 会把事情拨乱反正。