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The news has become a matter of opinion.
新闻成了对观点的阐述。
And this puts a newspaper editor in a position not at all dissimilar from that of a novelist. It is for the novelist to create, communicate and sustain over time a personal and coherent vision of the world that entertains, interests, stimulates, provokes and nourishes his readers. It is for the newspaper editor to do very much the same thing with the pages at his disposal. In that specialized sense, we are all in the fiction business now.
这也就使报纸的编辑与小说家置身于相同的境地。小说家就是要创造、传达并在一段时间内对世界保有一贯的个人看法，使读者从中享受乐趣、获取益处、受到激励、有所感触、得到滋养。对于报纸编辑而言，他们就是要对任凭自己支配的版面做完全相同的事情。就这一特定的含义而言，我们现在都是在搞小说创作这一行。
One of the more extraordinary truths about the soap opera that is the British royal family is that to a large extent the leading figures have had their characters invented for them by the British press. And such is the power of the fiction that the flesh and blood royals have become more and more like their print personae, unable to escape the fiction of their imaginary lives.
一个更为非凡的事实是对于英国皇室成员那犹如肥皂剧一般的报道，在很大程度上其中的主角不过是英国媒体杜撰出来的。而虚构的力量是如此之大，就连活生生的皇室成员们也与报道中的面貌越来越相像，而无法逃脱那富于想象力的对其生活的虚构。
The creation of "characters" is, in fact, rapidly becoming an essential part of print journalism's stock in trade. Never have personality profiles and people columns—never has gossip—occupied as much of a newspaper as they now do. The word "profile" is apt. In a profile, the subject is never confronted head-on but receives a sidelong glance. A profile is flat and two-dimensional. It is an outline. Yet the images created in these curious texts (often with their subjects' collusion) are extraordinarily potent —it can be next to impossible for the actual person to alter, through his own words and deeds, the impressions they create—and thanks to the mighty clippings file, they are aiso self-perpetuating.
对“人物”的创造实际上正迅速成为新闻出版业看家本领的要素。人物特写和人物专栏，还有那些流言蜚语，从未像今天这样占据报纸如此大的篇幅。用“特写”一词恰如其分。对于人物特写中的人物从不进行直接地描绘而是从侧面刻画。人物特写是扁平而又肤浅的，不过是人物的轮廓。但是这些煽情的刻画所创造出来的形象(被描绘的人物对此也往往心照不宣)具有非凡的影响力一即便是通过这个人物自己的言行也几乎不可能改变所刻画出的形象给人们留下的印象——也正是多亏了这些循环往复而又威力无比的剪报才使得这些被创造出来的形象得以长久流传。
