Today's Saying Story Selection 3 2005 Edition

Author: CCTV Today's Law Program Team
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: Legal Lunch for the Chinese People. On-site murder case, 13-year mystery case, mysterious website, passionate temptation. Documenting the progress of China's rule of law through vivid and specific cases, teaching the public about law, learning law, and abiding by law. Wang Xinzhong, the producer of Today's Law, once shared a story—7 years ago, he walked across a young man's "ground petition" while leaving the TV station's west gate, chatting and laughing. Such incidents had long been commonplace for them. On a Monday, he heard that the young man had hanged himself from the crooked tree at the west gate. From that moment, he said the instant he crossed the "ground petition" became a lingering sense of guilt that he couldn't shake off. That guilt has persisted to this day.
I understand that a person's sense of responsibility should have an anchor. Legal programs of different levels have different tasks and functions. Today's Law should be an intermediate course—you can't make it too high-level, or it would become too elitist. In fact, there are often two types of relationships between TV programs and audiences: one is where the program educates the audience, creating a top-down or bottom-up dynamic; the other is the so-called "audience is god" argument, where the audience dictates what they want to see. I don't agree with this. The audience is certainly not god, and neither are we, the creators. The relationship between creators and the audience can be seen as both opponents and friends. Only with a peer-to-peer perspective can we be friends, engage in dialogue, and foster mutual exchange.
So, who is god? In legal programs, "the law" is god, and the program itself is god. In this way, our perspective relative to the audience transforms into an equal one.