对重要媒体人的纪念往往成为新闻界重申其角色认同、职业理想与新闻权威的象征 机会。本文通过分析中国媒体人如何纪念央视原台长杨伟光,指出媒体纪念叙事表现 为从微观到宏观的三个层次:(1)以杨伟光为角色模范定义媒体“好领导”的职业边 界,而非以新闻专业主义来界定新闻业的边界;(2)通过再现央视的“黄金时代”与 “后黄金时代”表达怀旧与批评;(3)通过使用不同的“黄金时代”记忆维护不同的 文化权威。媒体从业者在塑造媒体“好领导”的职业边界时具有高度共识,但在阐释 “黄金时代”的记忆时存在分化。

Commemoration of a deceased prominent media professional offers the journalistic community a symbolic opportunity to reiterate or reshape their preferred role identity, professional ideals, and cultural authority. This paper takes Chinese journalists’ commemoration of Yang Weiguang, former head of China Central Television, as a case to examine the interrelations between media memories, the boundary of journalism, and journalistic authority. It identifies the threefold-intertwined memorializing narratives on personal, organizational and professional levels. Unlike Western media memories of deceased prominent journalists aiming at defining the boundaries of “good journalist” in line with professional norms, Chinese journalists’ commemoration of Yang Weiguang primarily serve to define a “good media leader”. Media memories also communicate journalists’ nostalgic feelings of the past “golden age” of television and legitimize journalists’ authority in using the past to critique the present and to map out television journalism’s future. Chinese journalists achieve high-degree consensus in the boundary-work of a “good leader”, but diverge in using memories of the “golden age”.