经济学人下载:生活在环球小报中

Life in the global gutter
生活在环球小报中

The popular press
广受欢迎的报刊

Tabloids are a phenomenon worldwide, but they come in different varieties
小报是世界范围内的一种现象，但是他们以不同的种类方式存在着

Jul 14th 2011 | from the print edition

AS AN example of bullying journalism, it takes some beating. Atabloid buys a surreptitiously filmed sex-video of an actor in his 50s suffering from Parkinson's disease. It demands an exclusive. At first he collaborates, even writing the interview himself; later he sues for blackmail.

作为恐吓性新闻业的一个例子，它很难被超越。一家小报购买了一部秘密拍摄的性爱录像，主人公是一名患有帕金森综合征的50多岁的演员。这家小报要求独家报道。开始这名演员配合了，甚至亲自写访谈；后来，他以敲诈勒索为由，将这家小报告上了法庭。

This is not another story emanating from the now-shuttered newsroom of the News of the World, where journalistic shenanigans have deeply embarrassed News Corporation, its owner. The tabloid in question is Bild Zeitung, Germany's biggest paper. Last year a court ruled that Bild's reporter had coerced theactor, Ottfried Fischer. In May a higher court overturned the verdict. Afurther appeal is pending.

这并不是从已经关闭的世界新闻报（其新闻工作者的诡计深深羞辱了它的所有者，新闻集团）的新闻编辑室里传出的另外一个故事。这家被谈及的小报是《图片报》，德国最大的报纸。去年，一家法庭判定《图片报》的记者胁迫了一名演员：奥德弗里德·费舍尔（Ottfried Fischer）。五月份更高一级法庭驳回了这一判决，更进一步的上诉正在进行中。

Mr Fischer's fate shows that Britainhas no monopoly on aggressive tabloids—a word initially used for compressed tablets in the late 19th century, but which then came to mean"compact" journalism. They are ubiquitous in developed countries and many developing ones, particularly in Brazil, where they have grown rapidly in recent years. Britain,with half-a-dozen national tabloids, probably has the most. France boasts no tabloid newspapers, though it has magazines (Closer and Gala)and the satirical weekly Canard Enchaîne that doa similar job (as far as that country's strict privacy laws allow). In America papers are mostly broadsheets, but tabloid-style television was invented there. Italy, Spainand Japanhave tabloids focusing on sport with huge readerships: each copy goes through many hands.

费舍尔的命运表明英国在侵犯性小报上没有形成垄断。Tabloid，这个单词在19世纪末起初用来表示压缩药片，但是后来又涉及到了“紧凑的”报纸的意思。小报在发达国家和许多发展中国家是普遍存在的，尤其是在巴西，小报在近年发展迅猛。英国拥有6家国家范围内的小报，或许是最多的。法国自诩没有小报类的报纸，然而其杂志（《Closer》和《Gala》）和讽刺周刊《鸭鸣报》（Canard Enchaîne）却做着相似的工作（在法国严格的隐私法的允许范围内）。在美国，大部分的报纸都是大报，但是“小报风格”的电视节目却是源于美国。意大利、西班牙和日本都有以体育为重点的小报，这些报纸具有庞大的读者群体——每份报纸都会经手多人。