美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Wall Street Journal' Editor Defends Trump Coverage At Staff Meeting

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal met with the newspaper's staff today to address concerns in the newsroom. Many journalists there are concerned that the paper has not been sufficiently¹ tough on Donald Trump² either as a candidate or as president. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik has been reporting on this story and joins me now from our studio in New York. David, what was the source of concern of the reporters?

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE³: Well, it particularly dates back to the campaign. I think that reporters at The Journal take pride - and rightly so - in what they do day in and day out. And yet there was a sense that the paper was tempered in how it decided⁴ to cover candidate Trump, taking a long time, like many in the media, to decide to take him seriously as a presence on the campaign trail, but then failing to really rigorously scrutinize⁵ him, particularly in the way that a business publication should. After all, The Journal is The Wall Street Journal. They should understand how an entrepreneur and businessman operates perhaps better than most. And on a number of occasions they felt that stories were soft-pedaled in The Journal or that stories were broken in other places that they were just simply not able to match.

And I think that was a disappointment for many in the paper. And they felt that there was a reason for that. They felt that Gerard Baker⁶, the-editor-in-chief, and Rupert Murdoch, because of their conservative personal leanings, were perhaps putting their foot on the brake rather than the accelerator.

SIEGEL: Baker has been editor-in-chief there at The Journal for several years. What has he said in response to these concerns?

FOLKENFLIK: Well, he's a very smart and thoughtful guy. Before he was at The Journal, he was a conservative columnist⁷ for Rupert Murdoch's Times of London. And what he said here was look, what we have to offer the world is unbiased journalism⁸, and that even if Donald Trump has taken an adversarial stance toward the press that doesn't mean that we have to be a combatant. We must be able to present stuff that can be trusted.

And then he said, you know, there are other news organizations that have approached it differently. And this was felt by the reporters I talked to to be an allusion⁹ to places like The Washington Post, places like The New York Times they have done some aggressive stuff. And he said, you know, and if that's what you like then you can go there. You can leave. And so some people took that a little askance. They took that as a bit of a slap. But he said, you know, what we're doing is what we've always done. We're going to continue to do it.

SIEGEL: David, you've reported today that one of the questions from a reporter there focused on the paper's controlling owner, News Corp executive Rupert Murdoch. What did the reporter want to know?

FOLKENFLIK: The reporter wanted to know - read which Rupert Murdoch, who's famous for being not only a businessman, not only a prominent media figure, but somebody who likes to influence elections and have the ear of presidents and prime ministers - the effect to which Murdoch's own conservative predilections¹⁰ and ultimately his embrace of Trump as a Republican candidate for president over Hillary Clinton affects news judgment¹¹. And Baker didn't say it has nothing at all. Baker said, you know, Rupert Murdoch and I talk a lot.

And that's fair. Murdoch's essentially¹² the proprietor¹³ of that institution. But he said, we talk a lot. We confer. Obviously Rupert Murdoch also talks to Donald Trump a fair amount. And at times he's open about that, at times not so much, as when his presence at an interview done by the Times of London was sort of edited out of photographs and the transcript¹⁴ of the event.

It's a source of concern for reporters who are not clear on what the impetus¹⁵ is for certain kinds of subtle decisions late at night between, say, 5 and 8 or 9 at night in terms of inflections, headlines, ways in which stories are presented, what pages they're picked to appear on in print. They don't know where that's coming from, and that's the source of that question.

SIEGEL: What's your sense of how well Baker's remarks to the journalists were received?

FOLKENFLIK: You know, it's funny - journalists, they actually say what he says is appealing. They like the idea of making sure that people from all political persuasions¹⁶ and stripes will trust what they report. And they are - agree that a lot of the reporting since Trump took office has been quite impressive, indeed in the pages of The Journal. They're not sure they trust Gerry Baker under Rupert Murdoch to make these fine-tuned decisions about what appears and how it's framed. And I think that's the source of a lot of concern and a lot of trepidation¹⁷ within that newsroom.

SIEGEL: That's NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik in New York. David, thanks.

FOLKENFLIK: You bet.

1 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

• It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
• The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。

2 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 scrutinize   

n.详细检查，细读

参考例句：

• Her purpose was to scrutinize his features to see if he was an honest man.她的目的是通过仔细观察他的相貌以判断他是否诚实。
• She leaned forward to scrutinize their faces.她探身向前，端详他们的面容。

6 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

7 columnist   

n.专栏作家

参考例句：

• The host was interviewing a local columnist.节目主持人正在同一位当地的专栏作家交谈。
• She's a columnist for USA Today.她是《今日美国报》的专栏作家。

8 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

9 allusion   

n.暗示，间接提示

参考例句：

• He made an allusion to a secret plan in his speech.在讲话中他暗示有一项秘密计划。
• She made no allusion to the incident.她没有提及那个事件。

10 predilections   

n.偏爱，偏好，嗜好( predilection的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Like any other idealistic person you make a secret of your predilections. 像任何其他理想主义者，你从不隐晦自己的偏好。 来自互联网

11 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

12 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

13 proprietor   

n.所有人；业主；经营者

参考例句：

• The proprietor was an old acquaintance of his.业主是他的一位旧相识。
• The proprietor of the corner grocery was a strange thing in my life.拐角杂货店店主是我生活中的一个怪物。

14 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

15 impetus   

n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力

参考例句：

• This is the primary impetus behind the economic recovery.这是促使经济复苏的主要动力。
• Her speech gave an impetus to my ideas.她的讲话激发了我的思绪。

16 persuasions   

n.劝说，说服（力）( persuasion的名词复数 )；信仰

参考例句：

• To obtain more advertisting it needed readers of all political persuasions. 为获得更多的广告，它需要迎合各种政治见解的读者。 来自辞典例句
• She lingered, and resisted my persuasions to departure a tiresome while. 她踌躇不去，我好说歹说地劝她走，她就是不听。 来自辞典例句

17 trepidation   

n.惊恐，惶恐

参考例句：

• The men set off in fear and trepidation.这群人惊慌失措地出发了。
• The threat of an epidemic caused great alarm and trepidation.流行病猖獗因而人心惶惶。