評論
打印
Unit 11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits
新聞如何成為觀點和觀點的禁地
Salman Rushdie
薩爾曼·拉什迪
I was wondering what, if any, common ground might be occupied by novelists and journalists when my eye fell upon the following brief text in a British national daily:
我很想知道小說家與記者之間如果有那么點兒共同之處的話，那會是什么。當我正在思考這個問題時，我注意到一家英國日報上簡短的聲明：
"In yesterday's Independent, we stated that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is fanning ostriches. He is not."
“昨日的《獨立報》上，我們宣稱安德魯·勞埃德·韋伯爵士正在養殖鴕鳥。但他沒有養。”
One can only guess at the brouhaha concealed beneath these admirably iaconic sentences: the human distress, the protests. As you know, Britain has been going through a period of what one might call heightened livestock insecurity of late. As well as the mentally challenged cattle herds, there has been the alarming case of the great ostrich-farming bubble, or swindle. In these overheated times, a man who is not an ostrich farmer, when accused of being one, will not take the allegation lightly. He may even feel that his reputation has been slighted.
在這些言簡意賅到令人欽佩的字里行間唯一能被猜測出的便是隱藏其中的騷動：某些人的痛苦和抗議。如人們所知，英國近來一直在經歷著可被稱之為“牲畜高危期”的時期。除了成群的瘋牛之外，還有鴕鳥養殖投機計劃或騙局這樣令人不安的嚴重事件。在這種過度敏感的時候，一個受到了指控卻根本沒有養殖鴕鳥的人一定不會輕視這種無憑無據的說法。他甚至有可能感到自己的聲譽受到了蔑視。
Plainly, it was quite wrong of the Independent to suggest that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was breeding ostriches. He is, of course, a celebrated exporter of musical turkeys. But if we agree for a moment to permit the supposedly covert and allegedly fraudulent farming of ostriches to stand as a metaphor for all the world's supposedly covert and allegedly fraudulent activities, then must we not also agree that it is vital that these ostrich farmers be identified, named and brought to account for their activities? Is this not the very heart of the project of a free press? And might there not be occasions on which every editor would be prepared to go with such a story—leaked, perhaps, by an ostrich deep throat—on the basis of less-than-solid evidence, in the national interest?
很明顯，《獨立報》說安德魯·勞埃德—韋伯爵士在養殖鴕鳥是極大的錯誤。當然，他只是一位著名的廉價音樂劇的“出口商”。但是，如果我們暫且同意把鴕鳥養殖這一據稱隱秘而又具有欺騙性的活動作為世界上所有此類活動的代表的話，難道我們不也必須認同確認那些養殖鴕鳥的農場主的身份、點出他們的姓名、要求他們解釋自己的行為是極其重要的嗎？這難道不是享有新聞自由的報紙的宗旨所在嗎？盡管報道的證據不夠可靠，也許是來自事件內部的消息，可鑒于國家的利益，編輯可能會準備接受這樣的報道。這難道不是每位編輯都可能會遇到的情況嗎？
