第八章
11
It is not that one article which we consider costly and beautiful is being ousted by another kind of article which we consider common or unclean. It is that of the same article a worse quality is preferred to a better. If you like popular journalism (as I do), you will know that Pearson's Magazine is poor and weak popular journalism. You will know it as certainly as you know bad butter. You will know as certainly that it is poor popular journalism as you know that the Strand, in the great days of Sherlock Holmes, was good popular journalism. Mr. Pearson has been a monument of this enormous banality. About everything he says and does there is something infinitely weak-minded. He clamours for home trades and employs foreign ones to print his paper. When this glaring fact is pointed out, he does not say that the thing was an oversight, like a sane man. He cuts it off with scissors, like a child of three. His very cunning is infantile. And like a child of three, he does not cut it quite off. In all human records I doubt if there is such an example of a profound simplicity in deception. This is the sort of intelligence which now sits in the seat of the sane and honourable old Tory journalism. If it were really the triumph of the tropical exuberance of the Yankee press, it would be vulgar, but still tropical. But it is not. We are delivered over to the bramble, and from the meanest of the shrubs comes the fire upon the cedars of Lebanon.
並非是那些我們認為價值連城與優美的文章，被平庸無奇、語意不清的文章所取代了，而是同樣一篇文章，較差品質的版本被挑選，而較優品質的版本卻被捨棄。若你（跟我一樣）喜歡大眾新聞，你必定知道皮爾森雜誌是份品質粗糙浮濫的新聞雜誌，你對其品質低廉的感受就好像嚐到壞掉奶油一樣真切，就好像你知道在刊載福爾摩斯的那段燦爛時期，岸濱月刊（Strand）是本好的雜誌。皮爾森先生是這浮濫庸俗報導巨流的紀念碑。他說跟做的幾乎每一件事情，都包含著些許無比虛浮、無意義的思想。他大聲喧嚷著爭取國內貿易，卻雇用外國人來發行自己的報章雜誌。當有人提出這明顯的矛盾時，他的反應不像一般心智正常的人，他不說這是一個明顯疏忽，反倒像一個三歲的小孩一樣迴避問題，他的狡詐極為幼稚。但正因他像三歲小孩，他對問題的迴避也不乾不淨。在人類歷史中，我懷疑是否曾出現過像他這種極度單純（蠢）的欺騙。擁有這樣心思與智慧的人，如今坐在過去保守黨，那充滿才智光環與榮耀的新聞報導的寶座上。若這真是美式出版業（the Yankee press）如熱帶植物般枝葉擴散繁盛的勝利的話，那雖然粗鄙，但至少充滿熱帶風情。但這不是，我們陷入了荊棘叢裡，從那最尖銳不留情的灌木叢中，竄出燒著黎巴嫩香柏木的火焰。
12
The only question now is how much longer the fiction will endure that journalists of this order represent public opinion. It may be doubted whether any honest and serious Tariff Reformer would for a moment maintain that there was any majority for Tariff Reform in the country comparable to the ludicrous preponderance which money has given it among the great dailies. The only inference is that for purposes of real public opinion the press is now a mere plutocratic oligarchy. Doubtless the public buys the wares of these men, for one reason or another. But there is no more reason to suppose that the public admires their politics than that the public admires the delicate philosophy of Mr. Crosse or the darker and sterner creed of Mr. Blackwell. If these men are merely tradesmen, there is nothing to say except that there are plenty like them in the Battersea Park Road, and many much better. But if they make any sort of attempt to be politicians, we can only point out to them that they are not as yet even good journalists.
如今唯一的問題在於，小說對於由這等品質的記者與新聞報導所表達出的大眾意見，還能忍受多久。可疑的是，會有哪個誠實與認真的關稅改革者，相信日報上，那錢可買到的荒謬高度支持率，認為國內大眾竟然普遍支持關稅改革。由此可知，如考量到真實的大眾意見，媒體如今不過只是富豪把持的寡頭政治。無疑的，大眾出於各種理由購買這些富豪的商品，但卻沒有什麼理由讓我們相信大眾仰慕這些富豪的政治立場，就好像我們也很難相信大眾會景仰克羅斯（Crosse）先生的微妙哲學思想，或是布萊克威爾（Blackwell）先生嚴謹的信條一樣。若他們不過只是商人，那除了說巴特西公園路（Battersea Park Road）上有好多個像他們一樣，甚至更為優秀的商人外，我們對他們也沒什麼好說的。但倘若他們嘗試要成為政治家，我們可明白告訴他們，他們實在還不夠格，連當好的記者都無法。
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