調査報道をひっぱっているメディアと言えば

メディア王マードック、アサンジのWikiLeaks、スノーデンによるNSAスパイ活動の告発など、世界を揺るがしたスキャンダルを真っ先に報じた英国のガーディアンについて読み応えのある記事をニューヨーカーが載せてくれていました。Alan Rusbridgerという編集長を軸に、調査報道の裏話、デジタル化の中での経営など、幅広く学ぶことができます。著名なライターであるKen Aulettaが書いています。

8000語を超える記事で、TOEICほぼ１回分の分量（ただし語彙やトピックの難易度は高めです）になりますが、ニューヨーカーが無料公開してくれている記事はそれほど多くないのでメディアに興味のある方は是非とも目を通していただきたいと思います。

ANNALS OF COMMUNICATIONS
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
A British newspaper wants to take its aggressive investigations global, but money is running out.
BY KEN AULETTA
OCTOBER 7, 2013

Words checked = [8225]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [83%]

調査報道の裏側については実際に記事を読んでもらいたいのですが、個人的に気になったポイントは米国の表現の自由を保障したFirst Amendmentが英国にはないので、出版差し止めなどを気にしながら報じなくてはいけないという点でした。まあでも、First Amendmentの保障がない国のほうがいい仕事をしているというのは何とも皮肉な結果ですが。。。

Now Rusbridger was poised to publish a story about how the G.C.H.Q. not only collected vast quantities of e-mails, Facebook posts, phone calls, and Internet histories but shared these with the N.S.A. Heywood had learned about the most recent revelation when Guardian reporters called British authorities for comment; he warned Rusbridger that the Guardian was in possession of stolen government documents. “We want them back,” he said. Unlike the U.S., Britain has no First Amendment to guard the press against government censorship. Rusbridger worried that the government would get a court injunction to block the Guardian from publishing not only the G.C.H.Q. story but also future national-security stories. “By publishing this, you’re jeopardizing not only national security but our ability to catch pedophiles, drug dealers, child sex rings,” Heywood said. “You’re an editor, but you have a responsibility as a citizen as well.” (Cameron’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)

調査報道によって今では最も人気のある新聞のウエブサイトの3つに入っているとあります。一方で、紙の伸び悩み、９年連続の赤字など経営の苦しさという点では他の新聞社と共通の悩みを抱えているようです。

It has been the Guardian’s biggest story so far. With eighty-four million monthly visitors, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Guardian Web site is now the third most popular English-language newspaper Web site in the world, behind London’s Daily Mail, with its celebrity gossip and abundant cleavage, and the New York Times. But its print circulation, of a hundred and ninety thousand, is half what it was in 2002. The Guardian, which is supported by the Scott Trust, established nearly eighty years ago to subsidize an “independent” and “liberal” newspaper, has lost money for nine straight years. In the most recent fiscal year, the paper lost thirty-one million pounds (about fifty million dollars), an improvement over the forty-four million pounds it lost the year before.

Last year, Andrew Miller, the director of the trust and the C.E.O. of the Guardian Media Group, warned that the trust’s money would be exhausted in three to five years if the losses were not dramatically reduced. To save the Guardian, Rusbridger has pushed to transform it into a global digital newspaper, aimed at engaged, anti-establishment readers and available entirely for free. In 2011, Guardian U.S., a digital-only edition, was expanded, followed this year by the launch of an Australian online edition. It’s a grand experiment, he concedes: just how free can a free press be?

本筋のところは読んでいただきたいのであえて触れませんが、個人的に興味深かった点をもう一点あげます。作家フランゼンはツイッターなどでの「にわか作家」を批判していましたが、ジャーナリズムという観点からはオープンであることはプラスの面もあるそうです。一般読者からは新しいネタの提供、調査の協力などが期待できるからです。

In his memoir, Rusbridger describes how the Guardian’s coverage of Assange and WikiLeaks helped him realize the extent to which his industry had changed: now anyone could become a publisher. “It’s the amateurising of journalism—with all that’s good and bad about that,” he writes. The path forward lies in what he calls “open journalism,” meaning a newspaper that not only is free for anyone to read but invites readers to participate in the journalistic venture. The bet is that greater reader involvement will attract a bigger audience, and more advertising dollars. The editors regularly mine the reader comments for story ideas and potential contributors. Last summer, during the Olympics, a British-born coach for the Chinese swim team wrote an anonymous comment describing the pleasure of working for a country that invests lavishly in its athletes; Guardian editors invited him to write a blog post about it. Rusbridger has said there’s no reason that the Guardian couldn’t include theatre reviews from audience members in addition to those written by Michael Billington, who has been the paper’s drama critic since 1971, and whom Rusbridger treasures.

Exactly how a newspaper should “filter the good responses from the bad” isn’t clear, he concedes, but editors are supposed to be curators. I asked whether his notion of an “open” newspaper extended to investigative reporting and other news. Emphatically yes, he said. “No other institution would have hired Glenn Greenwald.” In 2009, the Guardian posted a link asking readers for help in analyzing complicated expense documents filed by various Members of Parliament. Twenty-three thousand readers sent in their analyses; the Guardian staff reviewed them and found that many of the readers had discovered fraudulent charges.

A newspaper becomes “a platform as well as a publisher,” Rusbridger told me. But he knows that time is limited, and concedes that a pay wall is not out of the question. The Guardian charges for its iPad and iPhone apps, Rusbridgers notes. “We are not the Taliban of free,” he said. “We are not free fundamentalists.” He went on, “Is there an economic model for the kind of journalism we’re doing? We’re all trying our different routes to get there. No one can honestly say they’ve got the answer.”

In 2009, the Guardian posted a link asking readers for help in analyzing complicated expense documents filed by various Members of Parliament. Twenty-three thousand readers sent in their analyses; the Guardian staff reviewed them and found that many of the readers had discovered fraudulent chargesのくだりである、議員の無駄遣いについての調査の協力を一般読者に依頼したらたくさんの不正受給を暴いてくれたというのは日本でも報じられましたよね。

多読が重要だとか、読む量が重要だとか、いつまでも誰でも知っていることをくどくど言う前に少しでも興味深い読み物を読んでいきたいですね。