VOA常速英语:2016 Presidential Campaign Presents Unusual Media Challenges(翻译)

The media have become protagonists in the 2016 presidential campaign,and that is mostly due to Donald Trump, said Tom Rosenstiel of the American Press Institute.
2016年的总统大选中，媒体似乎成为了主角，造成这种现象的主要原因就是唐纳德·特朗普，美国报业协会的Tom Rosenstiel如是说道。

“Donald Trump in particular, and the Republican Party more generally,made the press a character in the campaign, by saying that the press was incompetent,out to get them, a level of demonization of the press that we don’t usually see.”
“唐纳德·特朗普尤甚，更主要的是共和党，他们大肆宣扬新闻界的无能，让媒体出尽了风头，他们就想要把媒体妖魔化，变成我们通常见不到的样子。”

While the Trump surrogates claim bias, Clinton’s supporters have accused the media of “false balance,”suggesting that things she has said - presented as evidence of her not being honest -are not equivalent to the evidence of Donald Trump not being honest.
尽管特朗普的代理人声称媒体搞歧视，克林顿的支持者却指责媒体做出了“不平衡报道”，暗示自己所说的事情——作为她不诚实的证据——跟特朗普不诚实的证据可不能划等号。

“But if my job today in the story, is to examine what Hillary Clinton said and is it true or not,I’m gonna go after that, as hard as I can, I’m not gonna say,‘Well, you know, I think this is only three quarters as serious as what Donald Trump did yesterday in the story I did,so I am only going to cover it at three quarters intensity.’ You don’t!”
“但如果我在这篇报道中要做的工作，是去调查希拉里·克林顿说过什么，以及她所说的内容真实与否，我就得尽最大努力去求证，我不会这么说，‘这样吧，我觉得希拉里今天所做的，比起昨天我那篇报道中特朗普所做的，只有四分之三严重，所以我就以四分之三的力度来报道它好了。’你肯定不会这么做的吧！”

Dori Toribio, a Washington correspondent with RTVE, Spanish Radio and Television,says she does not believe that reporters have been biased.
Dori Toribio是西班牙广播电视机构RTVE驻华盛顿的一名记者，她表示自己不相信记者在报道时会对谁存在偏见。

“Media are criticizing Donald Trump because of what he does, and what he says.It’s not because of, you know, an ideological or political bias.”
“媒体之所以会非难唐纳德·特朗普，完全是因为他的言行，而不是因为在意识形态或者政治上有偏见。”

Toribio said, even though it has been particularly hard for her as an immigrant and a woman to cover Trump,who has denigrated immigrants and women.She has striven to be neutral.
Toribio表示，尽管作为移民，还是一个女人，自己很难去对曾诋毁过移民和女人的特朗普进行报道，但她还是会争取保持中立。

For Thomas Burr of the National Press Club, the job of a reporter is to tell fact from fiction.
对于国家记者俱乐部成员Thomas Burr来说，记者的工作就是分辨真伪。

“That’s doing the critical, vital role a journalist has to have in a democracy,to educate voters and the public about what a candidate is saying, whether it’s truthful or not.”
“在民主选举中，记者必须要发挥至关重要的作用，我们要把候选人的言论及其真实性告知选民和公众。”

But Rosenstiel said there would be an enormous cost if journalists played arbiter.
不过Rosenstiel称，如果记者还要扮演公断人的角色，那要付出的代价可就太巨大了。

“What we need of our journalists are people who say:my commitment is to be an observer on behalf of other citizens, to find out the truth about what happened,what was said, why, what the motivations were,but ultimately it is the job of the citizen to determine what that means.”
“我们需要的记者是这类人，他们会说：我承诺代表其他公民做一名观察者，探索事实真相以及言论真假，分析原因，并搞清楚其动机，不过最终是非对错，还是要靠公民自己来评判。”

In the end, whoever enters in the White House next January,this will have been a memorable and unusual campaign, for the candidates in the race, but also for the reporters covering it.
不管最后花落谁家，明年一月顺利入驻白宫，这次与众不同的辩论都将十分具有纪念意义，对候选人来说如此，对一直跟进报道的记者们来说亦是如此。