水門事件中的《華郵》主編布拉德利逝世
Ben Bradlee, who presided over The Washington Post's exposure of the Watergate scandal that led to the fall of President Richard M. Nixon and that stamped him in American culture as the quintessential newspaper editor of his era — gruff, charming and tenacious — died on Tuesday. He was 93.
在《華盛頓郵報》(The Washington Post)揭露水門事件期間擔任主編的本·布拉德利(Ben Bradlee)於週二逝世，享年93歲。水門事件不僅導致總統理查德·M·尼克松(Richard M. Nixon)下臺，還奠定了布拉德利在美國文化中的地位——他是那個時代典型的報紙主編：作風粗獷、富有魅力、立場堅定。Mr. Bradlee died at home of natural causes, The Post reported.
據郵報報道，布拉德利在家中自然死亡。With full backing from his publisher, Katharine Graham, Mr. Bradlee led The Post into the first rank of American newspapers, courting controversy and giving it standing as a thorn in the side of Washington officials.
在出版人凱瑟琳·格雷厄姆(Katharine Graham)的全力支持下，布拉德利帶領郵報躋身美國一流報刊的行列。該報不懼爭議，令華府官員宛如芒刺在背。
When government officials called to complain, Mr. Bradlee acted as a buffer between them and his staff. "Just get it right," he would tell his reporters. Most of the time they did, but there were mistakes, one so big that the paper had to return a Pulitzer Prize.
當政府官員打電話過來抱怨時，布拉德利就會擋在他們與報社員工之間。“只要保證事實準確，”他總是這樣告訴記者。大多數時候，記者都能做到這一點，但有時也會犯錯。有一次的錯誤非常嚴重，以至於郵報不得不歸還了一個普利策獎項。Mr. Bradlee — "this last of the lion-king newspaper editors," as Phil Bronstein, a former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, described him — could be classy or profane, an energetic figure with a boxer's nose who almost invariably dressed in a white-collared, bold-striped Turnbull & Asser shirt, the sleeves rolled up.
布拉德利——“最後一位獅子王般的報紙編輯”，《舊金山紀事報》(The San Francisco Chronicle)的前主編菲爾·布龍斯坦 (Phil Bronstein)這樣描述他——可雅可俗，精力充沛，鼻樑扁平，幾乎總是穿着一件白領粗條紋的滕博阿瑟(Turnbull & Asser)襯衫，兩隻袖子捲起。When not prowling the newsroom like a restless coach, encouraging his handpicked reporters and editors, he sat behind a glass office wall that afforded him a view of them and they a view of him.
他要麼是像一個焦躁不安的教練那樣在新聞編輯部裏來回走動，鼓勵自己精心挑選的記者和編輯，要麼就會坐在辦公室的玻璃牆後，讓人們能看到他，他也能看到其他人。"We would follow this man over any hill, into any battle, no matter what lay ahead," his successor, Leonard Downie Jr., once said.
他的繼任者小倫納德·唐尼(Leonard Downie Jr.)曾說過，“我們願意跟隨這個人翻山越嶺、浴血奮戰，不管前路如何。”His rise at The Post was swift. A former Newsweek reporter, as well as neighbor and friend of John F. Kennedy's, Mr. Bradlee rejoined the paper as deputy managing editor in 1965 (he worked there for a few years as a reporter early in his career). Within three months he was named managing editor, the second in command; within three years he was executive editor.
布拉德利在郵報升職很快。他曾在《新聞週刊》(Newsweek)擔任記者，而且還是約翰·F·肯尼迪(John F. Kennedy)的鄰居和朋友。1965年，布拉德利作爲執行副主編重新進入郵報工作（在職業生涯早期，他曾在這裏當過幾年記者）。三個月之內，他便被任命爲執行主編，成爲報社的二把手；三年之內，他就榮升主編。The Post as he had found it was a sleepy competitor to The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News, and he began invigorating it. He transformed the "women's" section into Style, a brash and gossipy overview of Washington mores. He started building up the staff, determined "that a Washington Post reporter would be the best in town on every beat," as he wrote in a 1995 memoir, "A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures." He added, "We had a long way to go."
他發現，郵報當時與《華盛頓晚星報》(The Evening Star)和《華盛頓每日新聞》(The Washington Daily News)相當，沒有太強的競爭力。於是他開始爲報紙注入活力。他把“女性”版改造成了“時尚”版，以一種自以爲是的口氣對華盛頓風潮說長道短。他開始建設員工團隊，正如他在1995年的回憶錄《最“危險”的總編輯》(A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures)中所寫，他堅信“《華盛頓郵報》的記者在每次報道中都應該是最出色的”。他說，“我們的路還很長。”How long became painfully clear to him in June 1971, when The Post was scooped by The New York Times on the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of United States involvement in Vietnam. After The Times printed excerpts for three days, a federal court enjoined it from publishing any more, arguing that publication would irreparably harm the nation. The Post, meanwhile, had obtained its own copy of the papers and prepared to publish.
1971年6月，他終於痛苦地認識到這條路究竟有多長。當時，《紐約時報》先郵報一步，報道了“五角大樓文件”(Pentagon Papers)。這是美國政府對其介入越南事務的祕密記錄。在時報連續三天刊登文件節選後，一家聯邦法院以這些內容會對國家造成不可挽回的損害爲由，禁止時報公開更多內容。與此同時，郵報也獲得了這份文件，正準備發佈。But The Post was on the verge of a $35 million stock offering, and publishing could have scuttled the deal. At the same time, Mr. Bradlee was under pressure from reporters threatening to quit if he caved in. It was up to Mrs. Graham to choose. She decided to publish.
但是，當時郵報正欲發行價值3500萬美元的股票，而刊登這些內容可能會讓這筆交易泡湯。同時，布拉德利也受到了壓力，因爲記者威脅他說，如果退縮，他們就辭職。最後，選擇權交到了格雷厄姆手上。她決定發佈這些內容。Cementing a Reputation
鞏固名譽The government tried to enjoin The Post from publishing, just as it had The Times, but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of both papers. More than anything else, Mr. Bradlee recalled, the publication of the Pentagon Papers "forged forever between the Grahams and the newsroom a sense of confidence within The Post, a sense of mission."
政府試圖阻止郵報曝光這些內容，就像對待時報那樣，但最高法院最後做出了支持這兩家報紙的裁決。布拉德利回憶道，五角大樓文件的發佈“在格雷厄姆家族與編輯部之間永久性地建立了一種對郵報的信心、一種使命感”，這是其他事情都無法比擬的。Watergate consolidated The Post's reputation as a crusading newspaper. A break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972 — the White House soon characterized it as a "third-rate burglary" — caught the attention of two young reporters on the metropolitan staff, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Soon they were working the phones, wearing out shoe leather and putting two and two together.
水門事件之後，郵報新聞鬥士的聲譽得到了鞏固。1972年6月17日，民主黨全國委員會(Democratic National Committee)在水門大廈的總部遭人闖入——白宮迅速將其定性爲“三級入室行竊案”——這件事吸引了兩名負責華盛頓本地新聞的年輕記者的注意。這兩人分別是卡爾·伯恩斯坦(Carl Bernstein)和鮑勃·伍德沃德(Bob Woodward)。很快，他們便開始不斷打電話，四處奔波，拼湊蛛絲馬跡。With the help of others on the staff and the support of Mr. Bradlee and his editors — and Mrs. Graham — they uncovered a political scandal involving secret funds, espionage, sabotage, dirty tricks and illegal wiretapping. Along the way they withstood repeated denials by the White House, threats from the attorney general (who ended up in prison) and the uncomfortable feeling of being alone on the story of the century.
在郵報其他記者的幫助和布拉德利等編輯——以及格雷厄姆本人——的支持下，他們揭發了一起涉及祕密基金、間諜活動、蓄意破壞、卑鄙伎倆和非法竊聽的政治醜聞。一路上，他們成功抵禦了白宮的反覆否認、（最後鋃鐺入獄的）司法部長的威脅，以及在報道這樁世紀新聞時的那種難熬的孤立無援感。When the trail of crimes and shenanigans led directly to the White House, Nixon was forced to resign in August 1974. The tapes that he himself had made of conversations in the Oval Office confirmed what The Post had been reporting. Mrs. Graham wrote to Mr. Bradlee in her Christmas letter that year, "We were only saved from extinction by someone mad enough not only to tape himself but to tape himself talking about how to conceal it."
當對這些罪行和陰謀的審判直接指向白宮時，尼克松最終被迫於1974年8月辭職。他用來記錄橢圓形辦公室對話的錄音帶證實了郵報的報道。在當年寫給布拉德利的聖誕信中，格雷厄姆說，“有人竟然瘋狂到這種地步：不僅給自己錄音，還錄下了自己談論如何掩蓋這種行爲的內容。我們因爲這個人才得以免於毀滅。”After Watergate, journalism schools filled up with would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins, and the business of journalism changed, taking on an even tougher hide of skepticism than the one that formed during the Vietnam War.
水門事件之後，新聞學院裏擠滿了想成爲伍德沃德和伯恩斯坦的學生；整個新聞行業也改頭換面，形成了比越戰時期更爲明顯的質疑風氣。"No matter how many spin doctors were provided by no matter how many sides of how many arguments," Mr. Bradlee wrote, "from Watergate on, I started looking for the truth after hearing the official version of a truth."
“無論存在多少爭論，這些爭論有多少層面，又有多少人來引導輿論，”布拉德利寫道，“從水門事件開始，在聽過官方敘事後，我都會去探尋真相。”The Post's Watergate coverage won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for public service. It was one of 18 Pulitzers The Post received during Mr. Bradlee's tenure. (It had won only a handful before then.) The total would have been 19 if The Post had not been compelled to return one awarded to a young reporter, Janet Cooke, for an article, titled "Jimmy's World," about an 8-year-old drug addict whose heroin supplier was his mother's live-in lover. Only after she was given the prize was it discovered that she had fabricated the story — and lied about her credentials when she was hired.
郵報對水門事件的報道贏得了1973年的普利策公共服務獎。這是布拉德利在任期間，郵報獲得的18項普利策獎之一。（郵報此前獲得該獎項的次數寥寥無幾。）倘若郵報未曾被迫歸還頒發給年輕記者珍妮特·庫克(Janet Cooke)的獎項，總數就應該是19個。當時，庫克因爲一篇題爲《吉米的世界》(Jimmy's World)的報道獲獎，文章講述了一名8歲男孩染上毒癮的故事，而給他提供海洛因的是母親的同居情人。她獲獎之後，人們才發現這個故事純屬編造，而且她在進入報社工作時還僞造了自己的履歷。Mr. Bradlee offered to resign over the affair but received the same support from Mrs. Graham's son Donald, who had become the publisher, as he had received from Mrs. Graham during the Pentagon Papers and Watergate crises.
因爲此事，布拉德利提出辭職，但如同在五角大樓文件和水門危機期間獲得了格雷厄姆的支持一樣，他得到了當時的出版人、格雷厄姆的兒子唐納德(Donald)的支持。By the time of the Janet Cooke episode, Mr. Bradlee had weathered strikes by members of the Newspaper Guild, many of them his friends, and the pressmen, who had vandalized the pressroom. During those strikes he served as a reporter, mailroom clerk and general lifter of spirits.
在珍妮特·庫克事件發生前，布拉德利還經受住了報業工會(Newspaper Guild)成員聯合印刷工人舉行的罷工。罷工者當中，有許多是他的朋友，印刷工人還破壞了印刷機房。在此期間，他充當過記者和郵件收發員，還經常給大家打氣。He had also endured libel suits and government efforts — unsuccessful ones — to stop The Post from publishing articles on the ground of national security. In one case even his own friends pressured him, to no avail, to kill a story.
此外，他還經受住了數樁誹謗訴訟，以及政府的多次禁言企圖——都是以國家安全爲由來阻止該報刊登文章，但均未得逞。其中一次，就連他自己的朋友也施加壓力，要求他斃掉一篇報道，但他沒有屈服。Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was born in Boston on Aug. 26, 1921, the second son of Frederick Josiah Bradlee Jr. and Josephine de Gersdorff Bradlee. In a family that moved from 211 Beacon Street to 295 Beacon Street to 267 Beacon Street and finally to 280 Beacon Street, his boyhood, as he wrote, was "not adventuresome."
本·布拉德利全名本傑明·克勞寧希爾德·布拉德利(Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee)，1921年8月26日出生於波士頓，是小弗雷德裏克·喬賽亞·布拉德利(Frederick Josiah Bradlee Jr.)和約瑟芬·德格斯多夫·布拉德利(Josephine de Gersdorff Bradlee)夫婦的次子。布拉德利一家先是從燈塔街211號搬到了295號，又搬到了267號，最後搬到了280號。正如他寫的那樣，生活在這樣一個家庭，他的童年“並不驚險刺激”。With his brother, Freddy, and a sister, Constance, he learned French, took piano lessons and went to the symphony and the opera. He was at St. Mark's School when he was stricken with polio during an epidemic. But his self-confidence was undiminished: He exercised rigorously at home, and when he returned to school the next fall he had noticeably strong arms and chest and could walk without limping.
布拉德利和哥哥弗雷迪(Freddy)及妹妹康斯坦絲(Constance)一起學法語、上鋼琴課、聽交響樂、看歌劇。就讀於聖馬可中學(St. Mark's School)期間，小兒麻痹症流行，他未能倖免。但他的自信心並未遭到削弱：他在家裏大量運動，接下來的秋天重回校園時，他的手臂和胸部非常結實，而且能正常行走。Continuing a family tradition that dated to 1795, he attended Harvard, where he joined the Naval R.O.T.C. As a sophomore he was one of 268 young Harvard men, including John F. Kennedy, chosen, as "well adjusted," to participate in the now celebrated Grant longitudinal study, which tracked their lives over the years.
他延續了家族自1795年以來的傳統，入讀了哈佛，並在那裏加入了海軍預備役軍官訓練營。大二時，他和另外一些哈佛學生因爲“良好的適應能力”，獲選參加如今大名鼎鼎的格蘭特縱向研究(Grant longitudinal)。當時共有268名學生被選中，其中包括約翰·F·肯尼迪。該研究對他們的生活進行了常年追蹤。On Aug. 8, 1942, Mr. Bradlee graduated ("by the skin of his teeth," he wrote of himself) as a Greek-English major, was commissioned an ensign and married Jean Saltonstall — all in all, a busy day.
1942年8月8日，布拉德利以希臘語和英語專業學生的身份（用他自己的話說，“萬分驚險地”）畢業，並被委以海軍少尉之職，還娶了瓊·索頓斯托爾(Jean Saltonstall)。總而言之，這是繁忙的一天。A month later, Mr. Bradlee shipped out to the Pacific on the destroyer Philip and saw combat for two years. During the last year of World War II he helped other destroyers run shipboard information centers.
一個月後，布拉德利乘“菲利普號”(Philip)驅逐艦前往太平洋，並在那裏作戰兩年。在二戰的最後一個年頭裏，他協助管理了其他幾艘驅逐艦的艦載信息中心。After the war, Mr. Bradlee and a group of friends started The New Hampshire Sunday News, a weekly. For a time he thought "very, very, very seriously" about entering politics, he said in 1960. When the paper was sold, he snagged his first job at The Washington Post, in 1948.
二戰結束後，布拉德利和一羣朋友創辦了週報《新罕布什爾週日新聞》(The New Hampshire Sunday News)。他在1960年曾說過，有一段時間，他“非常、非常、非常認真地”考慮過從政。當這份報紙在1948年售出後，他獲得了在《華盛頓郵報》的第一份工作。One Saturday, as he took a tour of the White House, a delegation of French officials was visiting President Harry S. Truman and no translator could be found. Mr. Bradlee filled in.
一個週六，當他在白宮參觀時，一支由法國官員組成的代表團正在拜訪時任總統哈里·S·杜魯門(Harry an)。當時找不到翻譯，於是便由布拉德利代替。In 1951 he was offered the job of press attaché in Paris and left for France with his wife and his young son, Benjamin Jr. From the embassy job he moved on to Newsweek in 1954, as European correspondent based in Paris.
1951年，得到去巴黎擔任使館新聞專員的工作邀請後，布拉德利攜妻子和年幼的兒子小本傑明(Benjamin Jr.)前往法國。1954年，結束大使館的工作後，他去了《新聞週刊》，擔任其駐巴黎記者，報道歐洲事務。His work was thriving, but his marriage was falling apart and finally disintegrated when he met Antoinette Pinchot Pittman, known as Tony. They were married in 1957. A year later, Mr. Bradlee took up his post as the low man in Newsweek's Washington bureau.
他的事業蒸蒸日上，但婚姻卻瀕臨崩潰，並在他遇見暱稱爲“託妮”(Tony)的安託瓦妮特·平肖·皮特曼(Antoinette Pinchot Pittman)後最終瓦解。兩人於1957年結婚。一年後，布拉德利開始在《新聞週刊》華盛頓分社擔任低層職務。A Lucrative Idea
一個回報頗豐的主意Concerned about rumors that Newsweek was going to be sold, Mr. Bradlee, in a moment of brashness, decided late one night to call Philip Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, with an urgent message: Buy Newsweek.
一天深夜，對《新聞週刊》將被出售的傳言感到擔憂的布拉德利，自行其是地決定給《華盛頓郵報》的出版人菲利普·格雷厄姆(Philip Graham)打電話，並傳達了一條緊急消息：買下《新聞週刊》。"It was the best telephone call I ever made — the luckiest, most productive, most exciting," he later wrote.
“這是我打的最成功的電話，最幸運、最有成效、最令人激動，”他後來寫道。Mr. Graham saw Mr. Bradlee that night, and they talked until dawn. On March 9, 1961, The Post acquired Newsweek, and Mr. Bradlee, soon to become the magazine's Washington bureau chief, was rewarded with enough Post stock, as a finder's fee, to live as a wealthy man.
當天夜裏，菲利普·格雷厄姆見到了布拉德利，兩人一直交談到黎明。1961年3月9日，郵報收購了《新聞週刊》，而作爲獎賞，布拉德利得到的郵報股份，足夠他過上富人的生活。那是他推介這一機遇的回報。不久後，他成爲《新聞週刊》華盛頓分社社長。Mr. Bradlee continued his friendship with Kennedy and the Kennedy clan. When the president was assassinated in 1963, Mr. Bradlee was among the friends invited to receive the first lady in Washington. "There is no more haunting sight in all the history I've observed," he wrote in his memoir, "than Jackie Kennedy, walking slowly, unsteadily into those hospital rooms, her pink suit stained with her husband's blood."
布拉德利保持着與肯尼迪本人及其家族的友誼。肯尼迪總統1963年遇刺時，布拉德利是受邀在華盛頓迎接第一夫人的友人之一。他在回憶錄中寫道，“傑姬·肯尼迪(Jackie Kennedy)腳步釀蹌地慢慢走進醫院的那些房間，粉色套裝上還沾染着丈夫的鮮血，那是我看到的有史以來最令人難以釋懷的一幕。”Months before Kennedy's death, Philip Graham committed suicide, leaving his widow, Katharine, in charge of the family business. Two years later she was still finding her way at a newspaper that had been suffering losses of $1 million a year when she proposed that Mr. Bradlee join The Post as a deputy managing editor. The two formed a lasting bond.
在肯尼迪遇刺身亡的幾個月前，菲利普·格雷厄姆自殺，將家族企業留給了遺孀凱瑟琳掌管。兩年後，她依然未能在這家年虧損100萬美元的報紙找到出路。她提議布拉德利加入郵報，擔任執行副主編。兩人就此結成了長久的合作關係。Mr. Bradlee remained with the paper for 26 years, stepping down in 1991 at age 70. Named vice president at large, he had an office at The Post and became what he called "a stop on the tour" for new reporters.
布拉德利在郵報工作了26年，直到1991年以70歲的高齡退位。他被任命爲名譽副總裁，在郵報有一間辦公室，併成了他自嘲的新記者“入職參觀的一個景點”。He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, in 2013.
2013年，布拉德利被授予總統自由勳章(Presidential Medal of Freedom)。這是美國平民享有的最高榮譽。In his memoir he confessed to having no overarching prescriptions for the practice of journalism. He wrote that he knew of nothing more sophisticated than the motto of one of his grade-school teachers: "Our best today; better tomorrow."
在回憶錄中，布拉德利坦承在新聞實踐方面，他並沒有通用原則。他寫道，自己聽到的最有智慧的話，是他的一位小學老師的座右銘：“今天做到最好；明天做到更好。”"Put out the best, most honest newspaper you can today," he said, "and put out a better one the next day."
“今天在報紙上拿出能力範圍內最好、最實在的內容，”他說，“第二天再拿出更好的。”
