Orient TV老闆Ghassan Abound在自己的電視台上新聞節目
THE DRIVER STOPS on a crowded, dusty road lined with cars. Used SUVs and sedans are parked two deep in front of tired warehouses bearing sun-bleached signs for a shipping company and a tire store. “Is it here?” I credulously ask the chauffeur who was dispatched to bring me to this desolate stretch of road. “Yes, wait,” he says, pointing as a man weaves his way towards us. I get out and follow the man to one of the warehouses’ unmarked doors. After passing through a lobby that smells of cigarette smoke and mint tea, we push through a second, locked door and into the newsroom of Orient TV, a Syrian satellite channel run and broadcast from Dubai.
司機將車停靠在一個擁擠、塵土飛揚的車陣裡。很多二手的休旅車和轎車停在一個破舊、像是貨運公司及輪胎行的倉庫前面，招牌上面的字早已因為日曬而退色。「是這裡嗎？」，我隨口問了載我來這荒蕪之地的司機。「是的，請等一下」，他順手指著一個朝著我們走過來的男士，我便下車跟著這位男士走到倉庫中一個沒有做記號的門前。穿過迷漫著香菸味及薄荷茶味的大廳，我們推開第二道上鎖的門，進入Orient TV的新聞編輯室：一個來自敘利亞的衛星和廣播電視台。
The discreet exterior is no accident. Syria’s media is at war, and with its $1.5 million monthly budget, dozens of correspondents, and four regional bureaus, Orient TV is in the middle of it.
這個低調的門面絕非偶然，敘利亞的媒體正處於戰時，靠著每個月150萬美元預算、數十名特派記者和四個地區辦公室，這就是Orient TV目前所處的環境。
As the Syrian conflict has unspooled over the last four years, Orient TV has earned a reputation as an opposition bulwark. A Syrian car dealership mogul named Ghassan Aboud founded the channel in Damascus in 2009, intending to broadcast movies and frothy serial drama programs. But since the 2011 Arab Spring, he has used the channel to become an outspoken advocate of rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad. In addition to Orient TV, he bankrolls a chain of field hospitals in Syria. He has sent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money in the form of humanitarian aid, advocated an anti-government stance to policymakers across Western capitals, and trained a legion of young journalists in the opposition.
隨著敘利亞四年來衝突不斷，Orient TV已經成為反對派的代表。在2009年，敘利亞的一位車商Ghassan Abound，在首都大馬士革（Damascus）創辦了這家電視台，起初打算播放電影及肥皂劇節目，但自從2011年阿拉伯之春（Arab Spring）後，他將這個電視台當作一個反抗總統Bashar al-Assad的平台，除了Orient TV，Ghassan Abound也提供敘利亞當地的連鎖醫院財務上的資助，以及自掏腰包協助人道主義救援。Abound希望，建立一個反對政府以及西方資本的媒體，並且培育更多的年輕記者站出來。
Along the way, Orient TV’s evolution has tracked that of the broader Syrian media. Like much of the Arab Spring, Syria’s revolution began with a flood of optimism about independent, citizen-driven news. When protesters thronged the streets, obtuse state television and radio networks played patriotic songs on loop, while satellite channels like Orient TV ran grainy cellphone videos of police firing on peaceful demonstrations. By evading censorship, platforms like Twitter and Facebook achieved two things Syria’s tightly-controlled media never had before: They gave the political opposition a voice, and they exposed to the world Syria’s brutal police state.
一路走來，Orient TV的發展也壯大了敘利亞媒體的視野。像當時的阿拉伯之春一樣，敘利亞革命運動始於對獨立的樂觀、及追求民意導向的新聞。當反對者走上街頭、國家電視台和廣播電台不斷的播放愛國音樂，但像Orient TV這樣的衛星頻道不斷播放用手機拍攝，警方焚燒象徵和平示威品的影片。藉由躲避審查制度，網路平台像是Twitter和Facebook，達成了過去敘利亞政府嚴格監控下，媒體所做不到的事：它們替對立的政治立場發聲，它們向世界揭露敘利亞是個殘暴的警察國家。
Within weeks, social media had helped topple decades-old despotic regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. Orient TV, like so many broadcasters covering the uprisings, tapped into this new pool of readymade sources on the ground. Its journalists built a database of as many as 9,000 Syrian activists ready to send in video and tips. International NGOs and foundations sent smartphones to activists and deployed media trainers to advise them on Skype. A new generation of citizen journalists was born, helping to grow Syria’s mobile phone penetration rate from just 46 percent in 2011 to nearly ubiquitous today.
幾個星期內，社群媒體已經幫助埃及和突尼西亞推翻了數十年的專橫政權。Orient TV和其他電視台一樣，也報導了整起事件，並充分運用社群媒體這塊新興領域所帶來的資源。Orient TV的記者們建立了一個資料庫，讓大約9000多位的敘利亞激進分子可隨時傳送影像和報導。國際的NGO組織和基金會給予這些激進份子智慧型手機，並安排一些媒體訓練員透過Skype，告知這些激進份子何時會有活動。一個新的世代公民記者就這樣誕生了，也讓敘利亞的智慧型手機普及度從2011年的46%到現今的普及化。
An Orient TV presenter at work. When the uprising began suddenly in 2011, many of the channel’s entertainment team switched to news. “It was not for me to hire new people,” owner Ghassan Aboud says. “All the people working in Orient, they were from Syria, so they knew the situation on the ground. They saw that Orient TV is standing against Assad, and they understood what they should do.”
一位Orient TV的節目主持人正在播報新聞。當2011年的革命活動開始後，很多的娛樂新聞團隊會立刻去採訪即時新聞。「我不用雇用新的人力」，老闆Ghassan Abound說，「Orient TV工作人員都來自從敘利亞，所以他們知道敘利亞的現況為何，他們知道Orient TV是個站出來反抗Assad的電視台，他們知道該怎麼做。」
Yet four years later, the much-vaunted media revolution hasn’t delivered the freedom or the plurality it promised. As unarmed demonstrations gave way to conventional warfare, the media, too, entered the fray. The number of citizen sources grew, but their audiences fragmented. Opposition, regime, jihadist, and ethnic media today rarely resemble one another; the stories they tell speak less to a shared reality than to the fissures between different versions of the prevailing narrative.
然而四年後，這起備受讚譽的媒體改革運動，並沒有達到當初所承諾的—追求自由和多元的精神。和平非暴力的示威遠不如戰事頻仍所帶來的影響，媒體也捲入了紛爭中。數以萬計的公民資源成長，但它們的觀眾卻零散的。反對派、政權、聖戰士和族群媒體如今很少相互整合；它們的報導對於既有的現況說得太少，以致於無法彌平彼此之間的裂縫。
These days, every militia and brigade has its own YouTube channel, theme song, and social media network. And as armed groups have grown to resemble media organizations, the media has started looking like militias too: partisan, sectarian, and driven by hate speech. On social media particularly, but in the established media as well, broadcasts don’t just report the violence. With inflammatory language and provocative storylines, they actively incite it.
時至今日，每支武裝游擊隊伍都擁有自己的YouTube頻道、主題歌曲和社群媒體網絡。這些武裝的部隊就像媒體組織一樣，而這些媒體也愈來愈像軍隊：游擊隊員、特定宗教主義者，都被仇恨言論所激發。在社群媒體上特別明顯，但主流媒體也不例外，除了報導暴力，也使用聳動的言語藉此挑撥群眾。
Orient TV has not been immune to these trends. The channel was a voice of reason in the early days of the uprising, and remains among the most professionally produced and one of the few to have reporters on the ground, breaking news few others can. But Orient TV, which describes itself as a non-partisan opposition channel, also took a side. Critics see a station that panders to a limited, Sunni revolutionary subset, adopting sectarian lingo to speak to and about most everyone else.
就連Orient TV也無法倖免於此。早先它是革命的一個發聲平台，同時也是最專業、少數有專業記者可做即時報導的媒體。但Orient TV最終也選邊站了，立場逐漸迎合伊斯蘭遜尼派（Sunni）的分支，並用宗教派的話語對絕大部分人傳播。
Syria is hardly the first conflict in which the media landscape has become a battlefield. But the rapid expansion of social media in the last few years has sped the process. The sheer volume of information the conflict has produced, and the vast number of people who are shaping it, mean that everyone is both citizen and journalist, partisan and reporter. The media war is just as real as any fighting on the ground, because many of the actors are the same. Ending the military conflict likely won’t be possible until the information battle dies down.
戰事的延燒也影響了媒體，這是敘利亞從來沒發生過的事。但近幾年來，社群媒體的急速擴張加速了這個過程，由「衝突」中產生的大量消息也被多數人所扭曲，這表示人人都是公民和新聞記者、也都是黨派支持者和報導者。這場媒體戰爭就像真正的戰爭一樣，因為主角都是相同的。在這場資訊戰爭結束前，這些軍事衝突是不會結束的。
This explains why Orient TV operates behind unmarked doors, tucked away a dozen miles from the flashy Dubai neighborhood hosting most other satellite stations. The channel’s stance hasn’t just won it critics, but also enemies. Orient TV and its staff have been targeted by the Syrian government, the Islamic State (ISIS), and many others.
這也解釋了為什麼Orient TV要如此低調，躲藏在離繁華的杜拜數十英哩遠的衛星發射站。電視台立場不只得到批評，也樹立了敵人。Orient TV和它的員工已經成為敘利亞政府、伊斯蘭國（ISIS）和其他很多人的目標。
And Orient TV is fighting back. “The journalists don’t take it just as professionals; they take the revolution as their cause,” says Aboud, the owner. “They take it personally because Syria is their home.”
而Orient TV正在反擊。「新聞記者不會只把它視為一個專業；他們把它當作是個改革」，老闆Aboud說。「他們把它當成自己的事情，因為敘利亞是他們的家。」
BEHIND THE NONDESCRIPT FACADE, Orient TV’s offices have the bright and inviting quality Levantine TV is known for. The satellite network now focuses on covering the Syrian conflict, but its legacy as an entertainment channel has left a mark. The women’s hairstyles are big and teased, and their lipstick is red; male news readers slick back their hair so it glistens under the lights. As I enter the studio, a young presenter, Mira Al Qass, swivels toward me in her chair, her hair-sprayed curls bouncing.
在難以形容的表面下，Orient TV的辦公室有個為人所知的Levantine TV—這個衛星頻道過去以報導娛樂新聞為主，現在則著重在敘利亞的衝突事件上。Levantine TV的女性工作者留著時下最流行的髮型，擦著鮮紅的唇膏；男性新聞審稿人將他們的頭髮向後梳整齊，所以在燈光下是很閃耀的。當我走進攝影棚時，一個年輕的節目主持人Mira Al Qass從她的座位上轉向我—她頂著一頭有型的大捲髮。
Al Qass tells me she has worked for almost 15 years in the region, with private and state-run broadcasters in the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. But Orient TV, where she has spent the last year, stands out. “Orient TV is different because we have a belief—a cause that we are working toward,” says Al Qass, a Syrian from the Damascus suburb of Al Muhaireen. “It’s very important to get [to a Syria] without the Assad regime… I think all the people working here, they are working for this point.” Her colleagues nod in agreement.
Al Qass告訴我她已經在這個領域工作15年了，她曾在阿拉伯聯合大公國、科威特、沙烏地阿拉伯等私人或國營電視台工作過，去年才來到Orient TV，她覺得特別有感覺。「Orient TV很不一樣，因為我們有一個信念，一個我們必須朝這個方向邁進的目標」，Al Qass說道—她是位來自大馬士革鄉下的敘利亞人。「讓敘利亞脫離Assad的統治是很重要的，所有在這裡工作的人都是為此而戰」，她的同事點點頭表示同意。
In Orient TV’s main newsroom, the journalists who sit in orange plastic chairs at white desks often double as activists, on and off the job. When the uprising began suddenly in 2011, there was little time to hire news reporters, so many of the channel’s entertainment team simply switched jobs. “It was not for me to hire new people,” Aboud recalls now. “All the people working in Orient, they were from Syria, so they knew the situation on the ground. It was not too hard to get them [into] news roles. They saw that Orient TV is standing against Assad, and they understood what they should do.”
在Orient TV的主要編輯室裡，那些坐在白色桌子後面，橘色塑膠椅上的記者們通常都具有兩種身分—新聞記者與激進份子。當2011年革命發生時，Orient TV沒有足夠的時間去找新的新聞記者，所以很多娛樂新聞的團隊都直接轉換跑道。「我不需要雇用新的人力」，老闆Ghassan Abound說，「Orient TV工作人員都來自從敘利亞，所以他們知道敘利亞的現況，這樣的角色轉換對他們來說並不難，他們知道Orient TV是個站出來反抗Assad的電視台，他們知道他們該怎麼做。」
Syria’s media war原文網址：http://www.cjr.org/analysis/syria_media_war.php
作者：Elizabeth Dickinson
編譯：朱弘川
