水门事件中的《华邮》主编布拉德利逝世
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《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)揭露水门事件期间担任主编的本·布拉德利(Ben Bradlee)于周二逝世，享年93岁。水门事件不仅导致总统理查德·M·尼克松(Richard M. Nixon)下台，还奠定了布拉德利在美国文化中的地位——他是那个时代典型的报纸主编：作风粗犷、富有魅力、立场坚定。Mr. Bradlee died at home of natural causes, The Post reported.
据邮报报道，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.
在出版人凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆(Katharine Graham)的全力支持下，布拉德利带领邮报跻身美国一流报刊的行列。该报不惧争议，令华府官员宛如芒刺在背。
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.
当政府官员打电话过来抱怨时，布拉德利就会挡在他们与报社员工之间。“只要保证事实准确，”他总是这样告诉记者。大多数时候，记者都能做到这一点，但有时也会犯错。有一次的错误非常严重，以至于邮报不得不归还了一个普利策奖项。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——“最后一位狮子王般的报纸编辑”，《旧金山纪事报》(The San Francisco Chronicle)的前主编菲尔·布龙斯坦 (Phil Bronstein)这样描述他——可雅可俗，精力充沛，鼻梁扁平，几乎总是穿着一件白领粗条纹的滕博阿瑟(Turnbull & Asser)衬衫，两只袖子卷起。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.
他要么是像一个焦躁不安的教练那样在新闻编辑部里来回走动，鼓励自己精心挑选的记者和编辑，要么就会坐在办公室的玻璃墙后，让人们能看到他，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.
他的继任者小伦纳德·唐尼(Leonard Downie Jr.)曾说过，“我们愿意跟随这个人翻山越岭、浴血奋战，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.
布拉德利在邮报升职很快。他曾在《新闻周刊》(Newsweek)担任记者，而且还是约翰·F·肯尼迪(John F. Kennedy)的邻居和朋友。1965年，布拉德利作为执行副主编重新进入邮报工作（在职业生涯早期，他曾在这里当过几年记者）。三个月之内，他便被任命为执行主编，成为报社的二把手；三年之内，他就荣升主编。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."
他发现，邮报当时与《华盛顿晚星报》(The Evening Star)和《华盛顿每日新闻》(The Washington Daily News)相当，没有太强的竞争力。于是他开始为报纸注入活力。他把“女性”版改造成了“时尚”版，以一种自以为是的口气对华盛顿风潮说长道短。他开始建设员工团队，正如他在1995年的回忆录《最“危险”的总编辑》(A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures)中所写，他坚信“《华盛顿邮报》的记者在每次报道中都应该是最出色的”。他说，“我们的路还很长。”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，他终于痛苦地认识到这条路究竟有多长。当时，《纽约时报》先邮报一步，报道了“五角大楼文件”(Pentagon Papers)。这是美国政府对其介入越南事务的秘密记录。在时报连续三天刊登文件节选后，一家联邦法院以这些内容会对国家造成不可挽回的损害为由，禁止时报公开更多内容。与此同时，邮报也获得了这份文件，正准备发布。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，当时邮报正欲发行价值3500万美元的股票，而刊登这些内容可能会让这笔交易泡汤。同时，布拉德利也受到了压力，因为记者威胁他说，如果退缩，他们就辞职。最后，选择权交到了格雷厄姆手上。她决定发布这些内容。Cementing a Reputation
巩固名誉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."
政府试图阻止邮报曝光这些内容，就像对待时报那样，但最高法院最后做出了支持这两家报纸的裁决。布拉德利回忆道，五角大楼文件的发布“在格雷厄姆家族与编辑部之间永久性地建立了一种对邮报的信心、一种使命感”，这是其他事情都无法比拟的。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.
水门事件之后，邮报新闻斗士的声誉得到了巩固。1972年6月17日，民主党全国委员会(Democratic National Committee)在水门大厦的总部遭人闯入——白宫迅速将其定性为“三级入室行窃案”——这件事吸引了两名负责华盛顿本地新闻的年轻记者的注意。这两人分别是卡尔·伯恩斯坦(Carl Bernstein)和鲍勃·伍德沃德(Bob Woodward)。很快，他们便开始不断打电话，四处奔波，拼凑蛛丝马迹。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.
在邮报其他记者的帮助和布拉德利等编辑——以及格雷厄姆本人——的支持下，他们揭发了一起涉及秘密基金、间谍活动、蓄意破坏、卑鄙伎俩和非法窃听的政治丑闻。一路上，他们成功抵御了白宫的反复否认、（最后锒铛入狱的）司法部长的威胁，以及在报道这桩世纪新闻时的那种难熬的孤立无援感。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."
当对这些罪行和阴谋的审判直接指向白宫时，尼克松最终被迫于1974年8月辞职。他用来记录椭圆形办公室对话的录音带证实了邮报的报道。在当年写给布拉德利的圣诞信中，格雷厄姆说，“有人竟然疯狂到这种地步：不仅给自己录音，还录下了自己谈论如何掩盖这种行为的内容。我们因为这个人才得以免于毁灭。”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.
水门事件之后，新闻学院里挤满了想成为伍德沃德和伯恩斯坦的学生；整个新闻行业也改头换面，形成了比越战时期更为明显的质疑风气。"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."
“无论存在多少争论，这些争论有多少层面，又有多少人来引导舆论，”布拉德利写道，“从水门事件开始，在听过官方叙事后，我都会去探寻真相。”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.
邮报对水门事件的报道赢得了1973年的普利策公共服务奖。这是布拉德利在任期间，邮报获得的18项普利策奖之一。（邮报此前获得该奖项的次数寥寥无几。）倘若邮报未曾被迫归还颁发给年轻记者珍妮特·库克(Janet Cooke)的奖项，总数就应该是19个。当时，库克因为一篇题为《吉米的世界》(Jimmy's World)的报道获奖，文章讲述了一名8岁男孩染上毒瘾的故事，而给他提供海洛因的是母亲的同居情人。她获奖之后，人们才发现这个故事纯属编造，而且她在进入报社工作时还伪造了自己的履历。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.
因为此事，布拉德利提出辞职，但如同在五角大楼文件和水门危机期间获得了格雷厄姆的支持一样，他得到了当时的出版人、格雷厄姆的儿子唐纳德(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·库克事件发生前，布拉德利还经受住了报业工会(Newspaper Guild)成员联合印刷工人举行的罢工。罢工者当中，有许多是他的朋友，印刷工人还破坏了印刷机房。在此期间，他充当过记者和邮件收发员，还经常给大家打气。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，他还经受住了数桩诽谤诉讼，以及政府的多次禁言企图——都是以国家安全为由来阻止该报刊登文章，但均未得逞。其中一次，就连他自己的朋友也施加压力，要求他毙掉一篇报道，但他没有屈服。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·布拉德利全名本杰明·克劳宁希尔德·布拉德利(Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee)，1921年8月26日出生于波士顿，是小弗雷德里克·乔赛亚·布拉德利(Frederick Josiah Bradlee Jr.)和约瑟芬·德格斯多夫·布拉德利(Josephine de Gersdorff Bradlee)夫妇的次子。布拉德利一家先是从灯塔街211号搬到了295号，又搬到了267号，最后搬到了280号。正如他写的那样，生活在这样一个家庭，他的童年“并不惊险刺激”。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)及妹妹康斯坦丝(Constance)一起学法语、上钢琴课、听交响乐、看歌剧。就读于圣马可中学(St. Mark's School)期间，小儿麻痹症流行，他未能幸免。但他的自信心并未遭到削弱：他在家里大量运动，接下来的秋天重回校园时，他的手臂和胸部非常结实，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.
他延续了家族自1795年以来的传统，入读了哈佛，并在那里加入了海军预备役军官训练营。大二时，他和另外一些哈佛学生因为“良好的适应能力”，获选参加如今大名鼎鼎的格兰特纵向研究(Grant longitudinal)。当时共有268名学生被选中，其中包括约翰·F·肯尼迪。该研究对他们的生活进行了常年追踪。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，布拉德利以希腊语和英语专业学生的身份（用他自己的话说，“万分惊险地”）毕业，并被委以海军少尉之职，还娶了琼·索顿斯托尔(Jean Saltonstall)。总而言之，这是繁忙的一天。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.
一个月后，布拉德利乘“菲利普号”(Philip)驱逐舰前往太平洋，并在那里作战两年。在二战的最后一个年头里，他协助管理了其他几艘驱逐舰的舰载信息中心。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.
二战结束后，布拉德利和一群朋友创办了周报《新罕布什尔周日新闻》(The New Hampshire Sunday News)。他在1960年曾说过，有一段时间，他“非常、非常、非常认真地”考虑过从政。当这份报纸在1948年售出后，他获得了在《华盛顿邮报》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.
一个周六，当他在白宫参观时，一支由法国官员组成的代表团正在拜访时任总统哈里·S·杜鲁门(Harry an)。当时找不到翻译，于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，得到去巴黎担任使馆新闻专员的工作邀请后，布拉德利携妻子和年幼的儿子小本杰明(Benjamin Jr.)前往法国。1954年，结束大使馆的工作后，他去了《新闻周刊》，担任其驻巴黎记者，报道欧洲事务。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.
他的事业蒸蒸日上，但婚姻却濒临崩溃，并在他遇见昵称为“托妮”(Tony)的安托瓦妮特·平肖·皮特曼(Antoinette Pinchot Pittman)后最终瓦解。两人于1957年结婚。一年后，布拉德利开始在《新闻周刊》华盛顿分社担任低层职务。A Lucrative Idea
一个回报颇丰的主意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，对《新闻周刊》将被出售的传言感到担忧的布拉德利，自行其是地决定给《华盛顿邮报》的出版人菲利普·格雷厄姆(Philip Graham)打电话，并传达了一条紧急消息：买下《新闻周刊》。"It was the best telephone call I ever made — the luckiest, most productive, most exciting," he later wrote.
“这是我打的最成功的电话，最幸运、最有成效、最令人激动，”他后来写道。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.
当天夜里，菲利普·格雷厄姆见到了布拉德利，两人一直交谈到黎明。1961年3月9日，邮报收购了《新闻周刊》，而作为奖赏，布拉德利得到的邮报股份，足够他过上富人的生活。那是他推介这一机遇的回报。不久后，他成为《新闻周刊》华盛顿分社社长。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."
布拉德利保持着与肯尼迪本人及其家族的友谊。肯尼迪总统1963年遇刺时，布拉德利是受邀在华盛顿迎接第一夫人的友人之一。他在回忆录中写道，“杰姬·肯尼迪(Jackie Kennedy)脚步酿跄地慢慢走进医院的那些房间，粉色套装上还沾染着丈夫的鲜血，那是我看到的有史以来最令人难以释怀的一幕。”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几个月前，菲利普·格雷厄姆自杀，将家族企业留给了遗孀凯瑟琳掌管。两年后，她依然未能在这家年亏损100万美元的报纸找到出路。她提议布拉德利加入邮报，担任执行副主编。两人就此结成了长久的合作关系。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.
布拉德利在邮报工作了26年，直到1991年以70岁的高龄退位。他被任命为名誉副总裁，在邮报有一间办公室，并成了他自嘲的新记者“入职参观的一个景点”。He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, in 2013.
2013年，布拉德利被授予总统自由勋章(Presidential Medal of Freedom)。这是美国平民享有的最高荣誉。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."
在回忆录中，布拉德利坦承在新闻实践方面，他并没有通用原则。他写道，自己听到的最有智慧的话，是他的一位小学老师的座右铭：“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."
“今天在报纸上拿出能力范围内最好、最实在的内容，”他说，“第二天再拿出更好的。”
