The Facts

Editors of newspapers and magazines  often go to extreme to provide their reader the unimportant facts and statistics. Last year, a journalist instructed by a well-known corporation to write an article on the wall of president's palace in a new Africa republic. When the article arrived, the editor looked the first sentence and refused to publish it. The article began: hundreds of steps lead to the high wall of the president's palace. The editor at once send a journalist a fax instructing him to find out the exact number of the steps and the height of the wall. The journalist immediately set out to obtain the facts,but he took a long time to send them. Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient for the magazine would soon go to press. Then he send the journalist two more faxes,but received no reply. he send yet another fax to the journalist informing him that if he did not reply soon, he would be fired. However, the journalist again failed to reply and the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written. A week later, the editor received a fax from the journalist. Not only had the poor man been arrested,but he had put into the prison as well. At last , he was allowed to send a fax to inform that he had been arrested in which counting 1084 steps lead to the 15th high wall of the president's palace.

go to extremes to do ....    走极端    He went to extremes to say that the play was the best one.

go from one extreme to the other   从一个极端走到另一个极端

reporter (电视台记者)

correspondent  电台记者

journalist   新闻记者

publish  /  print /  go to press

fire  /  dismiss  / sack(解雇，辞退)       If you do ti wrong again you will be sack.  如果你再做错，你会被辞掉

instruct sb. to do sth. =tell sb. formally to do sth.   正式告诉某人做某事

refuse / decline / repudiate  

set out to do =  decide and try to do  决定，打算着手做

two more faxes = another two faxes  

reluctantly = unwillingly   

常用的否定副词：  never , seldom, rarely. little, hardly , scarcely, nowhere, no sooner, Hardly