WE’VE SEEN CELLPHONE VIDEOS of the police killings of Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and too many others. Earlier this week, the fatal police shooting of Louisiana man Alton Sterling was captured from two angles. Such imagery not only informs people about specific events, but also gives news organizations fodder to more aggressively challenge systemic issues of police tactics and law enforcement internal accountability measures.
無論是紐約的 Eric Garner，還是南卡羅萊納州Walter Scott，以及其他因警方執法過當而致死的影片，我們已見過太多了。本周稍早，警方槍殺路易斯安那州男子Alton Sterling的影片，還傳出有兩個不同角度的版本。這些影像不僅幫助人們了解特定事件，也讓新聞機構在處理員警訓練、和執法機構內部問責機制的系統性問題時，面臨更多的挑戰。
But just one day after Sterling’s chilling death, a new variety emerged in the increasingly familiar genre. Past videos allowed viewers to see uncut incidents of alleged brutality after the fact. Diamond Reynolds’s Facebook Live video Wednesday night, captured just seconds after her boyfriend Philando Castile was mortally wounded by a cop during a traffic stop, did so in real-time. Even more striking was her measured narration of the bloody scene: Reynolds became a broadcaster.
但就在Sterling慘死的隔天，一種看似熟悉卻又與過往有所不同場景出現了。過去這些影片能讓觀眾在事後看到殘忍的暴行，但星期三傍晚Diamond Reynolds的臉書直播，卻捕捉到她的男友Philando Castile在警方臨檢時被槍殺後的畫面，重點還是「即時轉播」。最驚人的，莫過於Reynolds像播報員一樣，對這血腥場面精準的描述。
“I wanted everybody in the world to see what the police do, and how they roll,” she said in front of a gaggle of reporters on Thursday. “I didn’t do it for pity. I didn’t do it for fame. I did it so that the world knows these police aren’t here to protect and serve us.”
「我希望世界上的每個人都看到警察做了什麼」，Reynolds週四對一群記者表示。「我不求憐憫，也不是為了名利，我只要全世界都知道這些警察不是來保護我們和為我們服務的。」
Reynolds was both victim and reporter—a citizen journalist, ultimately. The term gained prominence about a decade ago as advancements in digital technology and the financial downturn of the media industry began to converge. But only recently, with the continued progression of mobile devices and maturation of social publishing platforms, has the impact of citizen journalism become tangible in the United States. Whereas citizen journalists often drove media coverage of the so-called Arab Spring, for example, they’re now performing a similar service in the national discussion of race and policing in the US.
Reynolds是名受害者和記者，但更像名「公民記者」─一個大約10年前，在數位科技的進步和傳媒產業的收益下滑才興起的行業。但直到最近，隨著行動裝置的發展和社交出版平台日趨成熟，公民新聞在美國所造成的衝擊已不容小覷。公民新聞最成功的例子，莫過於先前的阿拉伯之春（Arab Spring）；而在美國，公民新聞在有關種族議題及治安工作的全國性討論上，也不曾缺席。
Social networks like Twitter have helped amplify such individual voices, with content shared nationwide in hours, if not minutes. But Facebook’s real-time video capabilities provide a larger and more direct conduit between incidents and far-away audiences. While there are some hitches to this sort of third-party publishing—Reynolds’s Facebook video was temporarily inaccessible due to a supposed “technical glitch”—its potential reach can’t be overstated. Reynolds’s broadcast was viewed more than 3.5 million times on Facebook alone as of 2 p.m. Thursday.
像推特這樣的社交媒體，能在短時間內放大個人的聲音，將內容共享至全國的範疇，但臉書的直播功能，則讓遠方的觀眾擁有更震撼、更直接的接收管道。即便目前第三方出版平台仍有難題待克服，Reynolds的臉書直播即是因為所謂的「技術問題」（technical glitch）而暫時不能瀏覽，我們仍不能輕忽其潛在的影響力。截至星期四下午2點，Reynolds的影片在臉書上已有超過350 萬次的瀏覽紀錄。
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作者：David Uberti
編譯：朱弘川
原文網址： http://www.cjr.org/analysis/philando_castile_minnesota_facebook_live.php
