Unit 11 - How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits
How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits
Salman Rushdie
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:
"In yesterday's Independent, we stated that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is fanning ostriches. He is not."
One can only guess at the brouhaha concealed beneath these admirably iconic 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.
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?
I am arriving by degrees at my point, which is that the great issue facing writers both of journalism and of novels is that of determining, and then publishing, the truth. For the ultimate goal of both factual and fictional writing is the truth, however paradoxical that may sound. And truth is slippery, hard to establish. Mistakes, as in the Lloyd Webber case, can be made. And if truth can set you free, it can also land you in hot water. Fine as the word sounds, truth is all too often unpalatable, awkward, unorthodox. The armies of received ideas are marshaled against it. The legions of all those who stand to profit by useful untruths will march against it. Yet it must, if at all possible, be told.
But, it may be objected, can there really be any connection between the truth of the news and that of the world of the imagination? In the world of facts, a man is either an ostrich farmer or he is not. In fiction's universe, he may be fifteen contradictory things at once.
Let me attempt an answer.
The word "novel" derives from the Latin word for new; in French, nouvelles are both stories and news reports. A hundred years ago, people read novels, among other things, for information. From Dickens; Nicholas Nickleby, British readers got shocking information about poor schools like Dotheboys Hall, and such schools were subsequently abolished. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn and Moby-Dick are all, in this newsy sense, information-heavy.
So: Until the advent of the television age, literature shared with print journalism the task of telling people things they didn't know.
This is no longer the case, either for literature or for print journalism. Those who read newspapers and novels now get their primary information about the world from the TV news and the radio. There are exceptions, of course. The success of that excellent, lively novel Primary Colors shows that novels can just occasionally still lift the lid on a hidden world more effectively than the finest reporting. And of course the broadcast news is highly selective, and newspapers provide far greater breadth and depth of coverage. But many people now read newspapers, I suggest, to read the news about the news. We read for opinion, attitude, spin. We read not for raw data, not for Gradgrind's "facts, facts, facts, but to get a "take" on the news that we like. Now that the broadcasting media fulfill the function of being first with the news, newspapers, like novels, have entered the realm of the imagination. They both provide versions of the world.
Perhaps this is clearer in a country like Britain, where the press is primarily a national press, than in the United States, where the great proliferation of local papers allows print journalism to provide the additional service of answering to local concerns and adopting local characteristics. The successful quality papers in Britain - among dailies, The Guardian, Times, Telegraph and Financial Times - are successful because they have clear pictures of who their readers are and how to talk to them. (The languishing Independent once did, but appears lately to have lost its way.) They are successful because they share with their readers a vision of British society and of the world.
The news has become a matter of opinion.
And this puts a newspaper editor in a position not at all dissimilar from that of a novelist. It is for the novelist to create, communicate and sustain over time a personal and coherent vision of the world that entertains, interests, stimulates, provokes and nourishes his readers. It is for the newspaper editor to do very much the same thing with the pages at his disposal. In that specialized sense, we are all in the fiction business now.
One of the more extraordinary truths about the soap opera that is the British royal family is that to a large extent the leading figures have had their characters invented for them by the British press. And such is the power of the fiction that the flesh and blood royals have become more and more like their print personae, unable to escape the fiction of their imaginary lives.
The creation of "characters" is, in fact, rapidly becoming an essential part of print journalism's stock in trade. Never have personality profiles and people columns—never has gossip—occupied as much of a newspaper as they now do. The word "profile" is apt. In a profile, the subject is never confronted head-on but receives a sidelong glance. A profile is flat and two-dimensional. It is an outline. Yet the images created in these curious texts (often with their subjects' collusion) are extraordinarily potent —it can be next to impossible for the actual person to alter, through his own words and deeds, the impressions they create—and thanks to the mighty clippings file, they are aiso self-perpetuating.
A novelist, if he is talented and lucky, may in the course of a lifetime's work offer up one or two characters who enter the exclusive pantheon of the unforgotten. A novelist's characters hope for immortality; a profile journalist's, perhaps, for celebrity. We worship, these days, not images but Image itself: And any man or woman who strays into the public gaze becomes a potential sacrifice in that temple. Often, I repeat, a willing sacrifice, willingly drinking the poisoned chalice of Fame. But for many people, including myself, the experience of being profiled is perhaps closest to what it must feel like to be used as a writer's raw material, what it must feel like to be turned into a fictional character, to have one's feelings and actions, one's relationships and vicissitudes, transformed, by writing, into something subtly—or unsubtly—different. To see ourselves mutated into someone we do not recognize.
For a novelist to be thus rewritten is, I recognize, a case of the biter bit. Fair enough. Nevertheless, something about the process feels faintly—and I stress, faintly—improper.
In Britain, intrusions into the private lives of public figures have prompted calls from certain quarters for the protection of privacy laws. It is true that in France, where such laws exist, the illegitimate daughter of the late President Mitterrand was able to grow up unmolested by the press; but where the powerful can hide behind the law, might not a good deal of covert ostrich farming go undetected? My own feelings continue to be against laws that curtail the investigative freedoms of the press. But speaking as someone who has had the uncommon experience of becoming, for a time, a hot news story—of, as my friend Martin Amis put it, "vanishing into the front page"一it would be dishonest to deny that when my family and I have been the target of press intrusions and distortions, those principles have been sorely strained.
However, my overwhelming feelings about the press are ones of gratitude. In the long unfolding of the so-called Rushdie Affair, American newspapers have been of great importance in keeping the issues alive, in making sure that readers have kept sight of the essential points of principle involved, and even in pressuring America's leaders to speak out and act. But I am grateful for more than that. I said earlier that newspaper editors, like novelists, need to create, impart and maintain a vision of society to readers. In any vision of a free society, the value of free speech must rank the highest, for that is the freedom without which all other freedoms would fail. Journalists do more than most of us to protect those values; for the exercise of freedom is its best defense.
It seems to me, however, that we live in an increasingly censorious age. By this I mean that the broad, indeed international, acceptance of First Amendment principles is being steadily eroded. Many special-interest groups, claiming the moral high ground, now demand the protection of the censor. Political correctness and the rise of the religious right provide the pro-censorship lobby with further cohorts. I would like to say a little about just one of the weapons of this resurgent lobby, a weapon used, interestingly, by everyone from anti-pornography feminists to religious fundamentalists: I mean the concept of “respect."
On the surface of it, "respect" is one of those ideas nobody is against. Like a good warm coat in winter, like applause, like ketchup on your fries, everybody wants some of that. But what was used to mean by respect—that is, a mixture of good-hearted consideration and serious attention—has little to do with the new ideological usage of the word.
Religious extremists, these days, demand "respect" for their attitudes with growing stridency. Few people would object to the idea that people's rights to religious belief must be respected——after all, the First Amendment defends those rights as unequivocally as it defends free speech—but now we are asked to agree that to dissent from those beliefs, to hold that they are suspect or antiquated or wrong, that in fact they are arguable, is incompatible with the idea of respect. When criticism is placed off-limits as "disrespectful," and therefore offensive, something strange is happening to the concept of respect. Yet in recent times both the American N.E.A. and the very British BBC have announced that they will employ this new perversion of "respect" as a touchstone for their funding and programming decisions.
Other minority groups——racial, sexual, social——have also demanded that they be accorded this new form of respect. To "respect" Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him. To "dis" him is, equally simply, to disagree. But if dissent is also to be thought a form of "dissing," then we have indeed succumbed to the Thought Police.
I want to suggest that citizens of free societies do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow citizens' opinions, even their most cherished beliefs. In free societies, you must have the free play of ideas. There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammeled. A free society is not a calm and eventless place—that is the kind of static, dead society dictators try to create. Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent and full of radical disagreements. Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked, and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the freedom of the free world. It is the disrespect of journalists—for power, for orthodoxies, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretension, for corruption, for stupidity, maybe even for editors—and the disrespect of every citizen, in fact, that I would like to celebrate, and that I urge all, in freedom's name, to preserve.
参考译文——新闻如何成为观点和观点的禁地
新闻如何成为观点和观点的禁地
萨尔曼·拉什迪
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：
“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。”
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。
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？
我正逐渐地得出我的论点，也就是说，不论是新闻报道记者还是小说作家都面临着确定事实真相并将其公之于众的大事。因为对于纪实性和虚构性的写作来说，两者的最终目的都是揭露事实真相，不管真相听起来有多么的荒谬。然而真相并非唾手可得，而是难以确定的。像劳埃德·韦伯事件中那样的错误就可能会出现。而且如果真相能够令你免除痛苦，它也能令你陷入困境。尽管真相这个词听着顺耳，但总是时常令人感到不快和窘迫，或是离经叛道。传统观念会集结为大军讨伐它。能够从可利用的谎言中获益的人会成群结伙地向它发起攻击。但是只要有丁点儿的可能，真相就必须被讲出来。
但是，真相可能会遭到拒绝，在新闻报道的事实与虚构世界的事实之间真的会有任何联系吗？在现实的世界里，某人要么是养殖鸵鸟的农场主，要么不是。在虚构世界里，他可能同时具有15种自相矛盾的身份。
让我试着来回答一下吧。
“novel”一词源自拉丁语，意思是“新的”；在法语里，“nouvelles”一词既指故事又指新闻报道。100年前，人们通过阅读获取信息，小说就是各种读物之一。从狄更斯的《少爷返乡》中，英国读者了解到有关多希男童学堂的情况，像那样的穷人学校的状况是令人震惊的，后来这样的学校就被废止了。《汤姆叔叔的小屋》《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》《白鲸》从这种新闻意识而言都包含了大量的信息。
如此一来，直到电视时代的到来，文学与新闻出版物一直共同分担着向人们讲述他们尚未明了之事的任务。
不论是对文学还是新闻出版物来说如今都已是时过境迁了。那些从前阅读报纸和小说的人现在把电视和收音机中的新闻广播作为他们主要的信息来源。当然，也有例外。那本优秀而又真实生动的小说《原色》的成功说明了小说也能时而比最出色的新闻报道更有效地揭露隐藏在事件背后的内幕。当然了，新闻广播是通过一番精挑细选的，而报纸提供的是更具广度和深度的报道。但是许多人如今读报纸，在我看来，是要看关于新闻的新闻。我们读报纸是要看到观点、态度以及政见。我们不是为了读那些没有经过分析的数据，不是像狄更斯笔下的葛擂梗那样，一味地要看“事实、事实、事实”，我们要的是对我们觉得感兴趣的新闻的阐释。既然广播媒体尽到了提供第一手新闻消息的职责，报纸也就如同小说一样进入了创作的领域。两者都对世界进行了不同的解读。
也许，与美国相比这一点在英国更为明显。英国的报刊主要是全国性的，而在美国不断开办起来的地方报纸使得新闻出版物为迎合地方口味和特色而提供额外报道。那些英国成功的内容严肃类报纸——挤身其中的日报包括《卫报》《泰晤士报》《每日电讯报》《金融时报>)——之所以成功是因为它们清楚自己的读者是谁，并且知道如何与他们交流。（日益衰败的《独立报》也曾一度清楚这些，但近来似乎步入了迷途。)这些报纸因为向读者展现了其对英国社会和世界的看法而获得了成功。
新闻成了对观点的阐述。
这也就使报纸的编辑与小说家置身于相同的境地。小说家就是要创造、传达并在一段时间内对世界保有一贯的个人看法，使读者从中享受乐趣、获取益处、受到激励、有所感触、得到滋养。对于报纸编辑而言，他们就是要对任凭自己支配的版面做完全相同的事情。就这一特定的含义而言，我们现在都是在搞小说创作这一行。
一个更为非凡的事实是对于英国皇室成员那犹如肥皂剧一般的报道，在很大程度上其中的主角不过是英国媒体杜撰出来的。而虚构的力量是如此之大，就连活生生的皇室成员们也与报道中的面貌越来越相像，而无法逃脱那富于想象力的对其生活的虚构。
对“人物”的创造实际上正迅速成为新闻出版业看家本领的要素。人物特写和人物专栏，还有那些流言蜚语，从未像今天这样占据报纸如此大的篇幅。用“特写”一词恰如其分。对于人物特写中的人物从不进行直接地描绘而是从侧面刻画。人物特写是扁平而又肤浅的，不过是人物的轮廓。但是这些煽情的刻画所创造出来的形象(被描绘的人物对此也往往心照不宣)具有非凡的影响力一即便是通过这个人物自己的言行也几乎不可能改变所刻画出的形象给人们留下的印象——也正是多亏了这些循环往复而又威力无比的剪报才使得这些被创造出来的形象得以长久流传。
一个小说家，如果他有天赋又有运气，可能会在其毕生的作品中创作出一两个千古流芳的人物形象。小说家笔下的人物渴望的是永垂不朽；人物特写记者笔下的人物也许则期望着声名大振。如今，我们推崇的不是品格形象，而是形象本身：任何一个在不经意间成为大众眼中焦点的人都可能会成为那独一无二的“先贤祠”中的一员。我要重复一点：一个自愿成为被祭奠着的人通常会心甘情愿地饮下那承载着盛名的圣餐杯里的毒酒。但是对于许多人来说，包括我自己在内，被人大写特写的经历也许就如同被当成了作家的素材，被变成了有着自己的感受、行动、人际关系和悲欢离合的虚构人物，经过一番描写后自己被改头换面，其中的差异要么是微妙的，要么是毫无微妙可言的。结果只能看到自己变成了一个连我们自己都辨认不出的家伙。
作为一个小说家，我认为自己被别人这样写来写去，不无讽刺意味。这很公平。不过对于这一系列的变化感觉上还是有点儿——我强调的是有点儿——不恰当。
在英国，对公众人物私生活的侵犯已经促使某些方面呼吁出台对个人隐私进行保护的法规。在法国就存在这样的法规，已故法国总统密特朗的私生女就的确可以在不受媒体干扰的环境中长大；但是在权势可以得到法律庇护的地方，难道就不可能隐藏着无法受到追査的大量鸵鸟养殖事件吗？依我个人的感受而言，我仍旧反对那些剥夺媒体享有调査自由的法规。但是，作为难得地经历了一度成为新闻热点人物的人——正如我的朋友马丁·埃米斯所说，成为“在头条新闻里真实的自己不复存在”的人，就我来说，当我和我的家庭成为媒体侵扰和歪曲的目标时，否认那些法规已被迫走上了极端就未免不够坦诚了。
然而，我却对媒体抱有势不可挡的感激之情。在所谓的拉什迪事件那漫长的演变进程中，美国的报纸在某些方面一直起着极其重要的作用。他们使得这一事件一直为人所关注，并且确保了读者始终清楚事件的基本情况，甚至还迫使美国领导人对此事发表看法并采取行动。但是我还要对更多方面致以谢意。我之前提到过，和小说家一样报纸的编辑就是要创造、给予并保有一个对社会的看法与读者分享。在任何对于自由社会的看法中，言论自由的价值一定是最髙的，因为没有了这一自由，其他所有的自由都无法实现。新闻工作者在保护这些价值方面比我们大多数人做得更多；因为运用自由就是捍卫它的最佳方式。
不过在我看来，我们似乎生活在一个日益挑剔的时代。我的意思是说，对美国宪法第一修正案广泛而又真正国际化的认同正受到一点一点地侵蚀。许多声称占据了道德髙地的特殊利益集团如今要求得到审查员的保护。政治上的正确性以及基督教右派势力的崛起为支持新闻审査的游说者带来了更多志同道合之人。我想仅仅谈一下这个再次兴起的群体所使用的众多武器中的一种，有趣的是从反对色情文学的女权主义者到宗教原教旨主义者所有人都在使用这个武器：我是指“尊重”这个概念。
从表面看来，“尊重”是无人反对的概念之一。就像一件冬日里质地优良的保暖外衣，就像掌声，就像炸薯条上的番茄酱，人人都想分享一点儿。但是“尊重”一词过去常常所包含的意思——一种善意的谅解与严肃的关注的综合体——已经同这个词汇所具有的意识形态上的新用法没有多少关系了。
近来，宗教极端分子要求对他们的看法予以“尊重”的呼声越来越髙。几乎没有人会反对必须尊重人们宗教信仰权利这一想法——毕竟，美国宪法第一修正案明确地保护那些权利，就如同保护言论自由一样——但是现在有人要我们同意下面这个观点，对那些信仰持有异议，认为那些信仰不可信、过了时、不正确或是实际上可辩论的，就是与“尊重”这个概念相矛盾的。当批评因为表示“不尊重”而被禁止，并因此具有了冒犯的意味，尊重这一概念就变得有些奇怪了。不过，就在最近美国全国教育协会和英国广播公司双双宣称将把近来这种颠倒了的“尊重”作为决定提供资金和制作节目的标准。
其他一些少数群体一种族的、性别的、社会的——也都要求给予他们这种新形式的尊重。我们一定要明白尊重，路易斯·法拉罕，就是完全地同意他的观点；而“不尊重”他，就是同样完全地不同意他的观点。但如果持有异议也被当作是一种“不尊重”的话，那么我们就的确屈服于思想警察了。
我想说的是：我觉得自由社会的公民们靠谨小慎微，跟着他人的观点——即便是他们最为珍惜的观点，亦步亦趋，而不敢越雷池一步，是不可能维护他们的自由的。在自由社会里，你必须有思想的自由交流和表达，必须要有辩论，而且这种辩论必须是充满激情的、不受约束的。一个自由的社会不是一个平平静静、水波不兴、什么事情都不发生的社会——那是独裁者企图创造的那种停滞的、死气沉沉的社会。自由社会是充满活力的、喧闹的、像河水一样欢快奔腾的，而且充满着尖锐的不同见解。怀疑与自由是不可分割地连在一起的。也许正是新闻工作者的这种怀疑，这种没有见到证据决不轻信的态度，才是他们对这个自由世界的自由最重要的贡献。实际上，我想庆祝的这种所谓不尊重并希望所有人都能以自由的名义来维护的，正是新闻工作者这种所谓的不尊重——不管这种所谓的不尊重针对的是权势、正统观念、各种意识形态的教条、虚荣、狂傲、荒唐、装腔作势、腐败、愚蠢，也许甚至包括那些编辑以及所有他人对自己的不尊重。
Key Words:
fraudulent ['frɔ:djulənt]
adj. 欺诈的，不正的，不诚实的
contradictory [.kɔntrə'diktəri]
adj. 矛盾的 n. 矛盾
unpalatable [ʌn'pælətəbl]
adj. 不适口的，不好吃的，让人不快的
unorthodox ['ʌn'ɔ:θədɔks]
adj. 非正统的，异端的
unequivocally [,ʌni'kwivəkəl]
adv. 不含糊的，不模棱两可的，明确的
impassioned [im'pæʃənd]
adj. 慷慨激昂的，热烈的
参考资料：
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits(1)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits(2)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits(3)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits(4)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits(5)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits(6)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第五册:U11 How News Becomes Opinion and Opinion Off-Limits(7)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
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