Transnational Travel Of The Myth Of Journalism:the Collective Memory Of Watergate In Chinese Journalistic Community

This article takes the collective memory of Watergate in Chinese journalistic community as the research object,discusses the transnational travel of journalism myth,and uses Isabel Jijon's typology of global collective memories to grasp the dynamic of the global memory of journalistic community.This article finds that Chinese journalistic community constructed three narrative versions of Watergate between 1978 and 2018-"Consortiums or political parties'competition","An unsuccessful disclosure "and "Lonely journalistic hero".In 1978-1991,the community strategically misappropriated the "Consortiums or political parties,competition" narrative to criticize the hypocrisy of bourgeois journalism,and established the authority of socialist journalism.They or constructed "An unsuccessful disclosure" narrative,carefully introduce Western journalism to China.Between 1992 and 2012,the community constructed a mythical narrative of "Lonely journalistic hero".When Chinese journalistic professionalism gradually formed around 2001,they began to join the global interpretive community and regarded Watergate as a paradigm of journalism,which helped them standardize the professional practice of China's journalism.In 2013-2018,the community hardly recalled the details of Watergate,but linked it to the 2013 Washington Post acquisition.They excavated the commercial value of media's brand that Watergate signified and produced a lot of discussions about the transformation of Chinese journalism,when they were situated in a traditional media's profit crisis.On the theoretical level,the typology of global memory proposes that local resonance and global significance influence the presentation of global memory as two major variables,and local resonance has a stronger power.As for the global memory of journalistic community,this paper validates this existing discovery and divides the local resonance of Chinese journalistic community into three levels:national ideology,professionalism in journalism,commercial profit in journalism.The more the Western journalistic story is in line with local resonance,the more it will be memorized and misappropriated by Chinese journalistic community.The power of national ideology has always been the largest,and it can suppress the professional incentives of journalism.The demand of commercial profit in journalism has become more prominent after the traditional media faced a profit crisis,reflecting the changes in the culture of China's journalism.Based on the demand for professionalism in journalism,the journalistic community often regulates the professional practice of the journalism and maintains the cultural authority of journalism by memorizing the journalistic myths of the country or other countries.No matter the myths come from which country,they all have a unique emotional mobilization ability because they highlights the initiative of the subject.The difference between them is that the national myths have stronger local resonance,which makes the western myths gradually fade out of the journalistic community's version and hinder the global identity of the journalists.However,when the local lacks suitable memory resources,the western news myth will be reactivated.By combining the Western journalistic myth with the current in a casual logic,the community can produce a new cultural heritage for the myth.However,this heritage often lacks stability.It can be questioned whether it is effective in causality and lack local resonance in China because of the differences between countries' journalistic environment.