节选自《DOING WELL AND DOING GOOD》
超纲词：newsmaker
Traditional reporting came under attack within the news media in the 1960s. The existing rules held that reporters should refrain from speculation and confine themselves to reporting the facts. Newsmakers had the advantage under these rules: their public words and actions largely determined the content of political coverage. The rules of reporting changed with Vietnam and Watergate, when the deceptions committed by the Johnson and Nixon administrations convinced reporters that they had let the nation down by taking political leaders at their word. Two presidents had lied, and politicians’ words and actions would no longer be taken at face value. Other developments—including the growing celebrity status of the television journalist and heightened audience competition—also fueled a more critical form of reporting.
20世纪60年代，传统报道受到了来自新闻媒体内部的攻击。当时的规则是，记者应避免猜测，只报道事实。新闻人物在这些规则下具有优势：他们的公开言论和行动在很大程度上决定了政治报道的内容。越南战争和水门事件改变了这样的报道规则，当时约翰逊(Johnson)和尼克松(Nixon)政府的欺骗行为让记者们相信，他们听信政治领导人的话，让整个国家失望了。两位总统都撒过谎，政客们的言论和行动将不再被当真。其他方面的发展——包括电视媒体人日益出名和对观众的竞争加剧——也推动了更具批判性的报道形式。
Journalists today find fault with most everything that politicians say and do. The press no longer even has much respect for public officials’ private lives—even their bedroom behavior is fair game for news stories.
如今，记者们对政客们的一言一行几乎都吹毛求疵。媒体甚至不再尊重公职人员的私生活——甚至他们的卧室行为也成了新闻报道的嘲弄对象。
As a result, negative coverage of politics has risen dramatically in recent decades. Negative coverage of presidential candidates, for example, now exceeds their positive coverage. By 1990, negative coverage of Congress and its members was over 80%. Each president since 1976—Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton—has received more negative coverage than his predecessor. Federal agencies have fared no better; in the 1990-1995 period, for example, not a single cabinet-level agency received more positive than negative coverage. As portrayed by the press, America’s public leadership is almost universally incompetent and self-serving.
因此，近几十年来，对政治的负面报道急剧上升。例如，对总统候选人的负面报道现在超过了正面报道。到1990年，对国会及其成员的负面报道超过了80%。自1976年以来，卡特、里根、布什和克林顿等历任总统都比前任受到了更多的负面报道。联邦机构的情况也好不到哪里去；例如，在1990-1995年期间，没有一个内阁级机构得到的正面报道多于负面报道。正如媒体所描述的那样，美国的公共领导层几乎普遍无能且自私自利。