媒体应该报道歧视语吗？

newspapers should reproduce offensive language when it is crucial to a story

第一段

This column comes with an unusual warning-the type that is sometimes called a trigger warning. It will mention a word that was once in common usage in parts of the United States but which many people have come to regard as the foulest in the english language.

重点词汇

• crucial

  • extremely important or necessary

    • a crucial decision/question
    • Her work has been crucial to the project's success.
    • It is crucial that the problem is tackled immediately.
    • Price will be a crucial factor in the success of this new product.

• trigger

  • a part of a gun that causes the gun to fire when pressed

    • It's not clear who actually pulled the trigger.

  • an event or situation, etc. that causes something to start

    • There are fears that the incident may be a trigger for more violence in the capital.
    • Some people find that certain foods trigger their headaches.
    • The racial killings at the weekend have triggered off a wave of protests.

• regard

  • to consider or have an opinion about something or someone

    • Environmentalists regard GM technology with suspicion.
    • Her parents always regarded her as the smartest of their children.
    • He is generally/widely regarded as the father of international law.

• foul

  • extremely unpleasant

    • Those toilets smell foul!
    • I've had a foul day at work.
    • Why are you in such a foul mood this morning?
    • What foul weather!

第二段

on June 24th three policemen in Wilmingtion, North Carolina, were sacked because of conversations that had been accidentally recorded in a patrol-man's car. In the most egregious of the taped exchanges, one of the cops, boasting about plans to buy an assault rifle ,said :"we are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them"- proceeding to refer to black people with an expletive and a racial slur.

重点词汇

• sack

  • a large bag made of strong cloth, paper, or plastic, used to store large amounts of something

    • The corn was stored in large sacks.
    • a sack of potatoes/coal/flour
    • a sack of groceries

• patrol

  • (especially of soldiers or the police) to go around an area or a building to see if there is any trouble or danger

    • The whole town is patrolled by police because of the possibility of riots.
    • A security guard with a dog patrols the building site at night.
    • Coastguards found a deserted boat while patrolling (along) the coast.

• egregious

  • extremely bad in a way that is very noticeable

    • It was an egregious error for a statesman to show such ignorance.

• tape

  • a long, narrow strip of material that is sometimes sticky on one side

    • I need some tape and scissors to wrap the present.

• assault

  • a violent attack

    • He was charged with sexual assault.
    • The number of indecent assaults has increased alarmingly over the past year.
    • an assault on a police officer
    • They launched an assault on the capital yesterday.

• slaughtering

  • the killing of many people cruelly and unfairly, especially in a war

    • Hardly anyone in the town escaped the slaughter when the rebels were defeated.
    • We must find ways of reducing the slaughter which takes place on our roads

• expletive

  • a word that is considered offensive

    • She dropped the book on her foot and let out a row/string of expletives.

• racial

  • happening between people of different races

    • racial discrimination/prejudice
    • He had a vision of a society living in racial harmony.
    • The law has done little to prevent racial discrimination and inequality.

• slur

  • to pronounce the sounds of a word in a way that is wrong or not clear

    • Her speech was slurred but she still denied she was drunk.

  • to harm someone's reputation by criticizing them

    • The report slurs both the teachers and students.

第三段

That is how the New York Times reported the story, in any case. What the policeman actually said was:" we are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them fucking niggers." Such vicious racism in police departments should cause shock (though perhaps not surprise: some activists argued that the incident proved a point they had been making for ages). Yet the redacted account of the episode given in the Times conveyed very little shock at all.

重点词汇

• vicious

  • Vicious people or actions show an intention or wish to hurt someone or something very badly.

    • a vicious thug
    • a vicious dog
    • The police said that this was one of the most vicious attacks they'd ever seen.
    • He gave her a vicious look.

• redact

  • to remove words or information from a text before it is printed or made available to the public

    • Officers' names are routinely redacted from any publicly released reports.
    • Some parts of secret files are available to the public, but heavily redacted.

• episode

  • a single event or group of related events

    • This latest episode in the fraud scandal has shocked a lot of people.
    • The drugs, the divorce, and the depression - it's an episode in his life that he wants to forget.
    • The whole episode left me fuming at the injustice of it all.

第四段

Other news outlets ,including the Washington Post, replaced the slur with "f-----n-----". This might seem a best-of-both-worlds policy, in which the facts are clear, but the reader is spared the experience of the abhorrent terms in full. But as with all halfway solutions, it can also be seen as the worst of both.Readers have the vocabulary clearly in their minds, yet they have also been teated as too delicate to handle it.

重点词汇

• outlet

  • a way, especially a pipe or hole, for liquid or gas to go out

    • a waste water outlet
    • an outlet pipe

• abhorrent

  • morally very bad

    • an abhorrent crime
    • Racism of any kind is abhorrent to me.

• delicate

  • needing careful treatment, especially because easily damaged

    • Peaches have delicate skins which are easily bruised.
    • Delicate plants need to be kept in a greenhouse during the winter.
    • Molly's health has always been delicate

第五段

Philosophers of language distinguish between "mention" and "use" of words. In this case ,the cop used the word, but those discussing the story are mentioning it.Black public figures have disagreed on whether the "n-word" should even be mentioned in its uncensored form . At an academic discussion of racism your columnist once attended, a black speaker sought the audience's permission to do so. One black attendee did object, but after a polite disagreement the speaker continued , and said the word. Barack Obama mentioned the term quite deliberately in a podcast during his presidency ,in the course of arguing that the naked racism it represented was hardly the only kind left to fight against.

重点词汇

• philosopher

  • someone who studies or writes about the meaning of life

    • Plato was a Greek philosopher.
    • This organic vision of society was shared by moralists and philosophers.

• distinguish

  • to notice or understand the difference between two things

    • He's colour-blind and can't distinguish (the difference) between red and green easily.
    • I sometimes have difficulty distinguishing Spanish from Portuguese.
    • It's important to distinguish between business and pleasure.
    • It's not the beauty so much as the range of his voice that distinguishes him from other tenors.

• censored

  • a person whose job is to read books, watch films, etc. in order to remove anything offensive from them

    • The book was heavily censored when first published.

• columnist

  • someone who writes a regular article for a newspaper or magazine

    • She's a columnist for USA Today.
    • a gossip/sports columnist

• deliberately

  • I'm sure he says these things deliberately to annoy me.

  • 子主题 2

    • It is believed that the building was set on fire deliberately.
    • I deliberately didn't have lunch so that I would be hungry tonight.

第六段

Hearing obscenities, including slurs , causes a physical stress response in creased blood pressure, skin conductance because of sweat , dilated pupils and the like .But the experience of racist attitudes (even without slurs) causes the body to react similarity . Given that overlap in responses , the issue of whether to print insulting terms may be considered part of a larger question : should newspapers include shocking material? they routinely report on violent events, but such coverage might itself trigger a post-traumatic stress response in people who have experienced violence of the same kind.

重点词汇

• obscenity

  • the fact that something is obscene

    • The people who made that movie could be prosecuted for obscenity.
    • Such deliberate destruction of the environment is an obscenity (= offensive and shocking).
    • obscenity laws

• sweat

  • the clear, salty liquid that you pass through your skin

    • The dancers were dripping with/pouring with sweat after a morning's rehearsal.
    • She wiped the beads (= drops) of sweat from her forehead.

• dilated

  • wider or further open than usual

    • dilated pupils

• pupil

  • the circular black area in the centre of an eye, through which light enters

    • Pupils contract in bright light, and dilate in darkness.

• routinely

  • used for describing what often or usually happens

    • Health and safety rules are routinely flouted/ignored.
    • We also routinely check samples before and after longer exposures even for samples that pass initial screening of radiation sensitivity.

• post-traumatic

  • a mental condition in which a person suffers severe anxiety and depression after a very frightening or shocking experience

第七段

Consider , as an emblematic case study , the appearance of gruesome photographs in print. A picture has more direct power to arose emotion than any reporter's description . Newspapers do, and should , use caution when deciding , for example , whether to run images of dead or injured bodies . But sometimes they do and they should.

重点词汇

• emblematic

  • representing a particular person, group, or idea

    • A sword is emblematic of power gained by violence.
    • These approaches see language again as an emblematic display of identity.

• gruesome

  • extremely unpleasant and shocking, and usually dealing with death or injury

    • The newspaper article included a gruesome description of the murder.

第八段

In other words, the decision over whether to reproduce a vile slur is also a judgment about what role emotion should play in journalism . If humans were perfectly rational, f---------n---------------- might be enough . Readers get what they need to understand the story and will react accordingly.

重点词汇

• vile

  • unpleasant, immoral, and unacceptable

    • This vile policy of ethnic cleansing must be stopped.
    • This cheese smells vile.
    • He's in a vile mood/temper today.

• journalism

  • the work of collecting, writing, and publishing news stories and articles in newspapers and magazines

    • The ethics of journalism are much debated.
    • He decided to forsake politics for journalism.
    • My son's planning to go into journalism.

• rational

  • based on clear thought and reason

    • There must be some rational explanation for what happened.
    • a rational act/course of action
    • He was too upset to be rational.

第九段

But people are not entirely rational , as good editors, along with advertisers and politicians ,know . The photograph of a single dead three-year-old washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015 if often credited with galvanising a response to the European refugee cirisi in a way that accounts of thousands of faceless deaths had failed to do. Not without reason do journalists often begin stories with heart-rending vignettes before going into systemic injustices. One of the core tools of journalism is emotion ,used judiciously to reach readers' hearts as well as their minds.

重点词汇

• galvanising

  • to cause someone to suddenly take action, especially by shocking or exciting them in some way

    • Western charities were galvanized by TV pictures of starving people.
    • The prospect of his mother coming to stay galvanized him into action and he started cleaning the house.

• refugee

  • a person who has escaped from their own country for political, religious, or economic reasons or because of a war

    • Thousands of refugees fled across the border.
    • He had to show that he had a well-founded fear of persecution on religious or political grounds to qualify as a refugee.
    • We have been tasked with setting up camps for refugees.
    • The refugees were packed shoulder to shoulder on the boat.
    • Many refugees have arrived at the border without passports.

• crisis

  • a time of great disagreement, confusion, or suffering

    • The country's leadership is in crisis.
    • an economic/financial crisis
    • We have a family crisis on my hands - my 16-year-old sister is pregnant.
    • crisis talks
    • A mediator has been called in to resolve the crisis.

• rend

  • to tear or break something violently

    • With one stroke of his sword, he rent his enemy's helmet in two.
    • Firemen had to rend him free of (= pull him out of) the burning car.
    • A terrifying scream rent the air.

• vignettes

  • a short piece of writing, music, acting, etc. that clearly expresses the typical characteristics of something or someone

    • She wrote several vignettes of small-town life.

第十段

No one thinks that papers should casually toss around hurtful words. (And , by the by, on one serious about the issue thinks that because some African-Americans have reclaimed the slur for themselves, outsiders are now free to use it too) But The Economist's style book says of obscenities that "if you do use them ,spell them out in full." Let the shock , sadness and anger that readers feel upon hearing them turn into action

重点词汇

• toss

  • to throw something carelessly

    • He glanced at the letter and then tossed it into the bin.
    • The bull tossed him up into the air.
    • ] Andrew tossed him the ball.
    • Let's toss a coin to see who'll go first.

• reclaim

  • to take back something that was yours

    • You'll be able to reclaim the tax on all equipment that you buy.
    • I reclaimed my suitcase from the lost luggage office.