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Unit 11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits
新闻如何成为观点和观点的禁地
Salman Rushdie
萨尔曼·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:
我很想知道小说家与记者之间如果有那么点儿共同之处的话，那会是什么。当我正在思考这个问题时，我注意到一家英国日报上简短的声明：
"In yesterday's Independent, we stated that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is fanning ostriches. He is not."
“昨日的《独立报》上，我们宣称安德鲁·劳埃德·韦伯爵士正在养殖鸵鸟。但他没有养。”
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.
在这些言简意赅到令人钦佩的字里行间唯一能被猜测出的便是隐藏其中的骚动：某些人的痛苦和抗议。如人们所知，英国近来一直在经历着可被称之为“牲畜高危期”的时期。除了成群的疯牛之外，还有鸵鸟养殖投机计划或骗局这样令人不安的严重事件。在这种过度敏感的时候，一个受到了指控却根本没有养殖鸵鸟的人一定不会轻视这种无凭无据的说法。他甚至有可能感到自己的声誉受到了蔑视。
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?
很明显，《独立报》说安德鲁·劳埃德—韦伯爵士在养殖鸵鸟是极大的错误。当然，他只是一位著名的廉价音乐剧的“出口商”。但是，如果我们暂且同意把鸵鸟养殖这一据称隐秘而又具有欺骗性的活动作为世界上所有此类活动的代表的话，难道我们不也必须认同确认那些养殖鸵鸟的农场主的身份、点出他们的姓名、要求他们解释自己的行为是极其重要的吗？这难道不是享有新闻自由的报纸的宗旨所在吗？尽管报道的证据不够可靠，也许是来自事件内部的消息，可鉴于国家的利益，编辑可能会准备接受这样的报道。这难道不是每位编辑都可能会遇到的情况吗？
