迈克?华莱士:真相“拷问者”|迈克华莱士

　　“My epitaph? I want it to be this: tough, but fair. Nothing else.”　　“我的墓志铭？我希望这样写：他不好对付，但为人公正。就这一句，我不需要别的。”
　　——Mike Wallace (迈克·华莱士)
　　Mike Wallace, the CBS reporter who became one of America’s best-known broadcast journalists as an interrogator of the famous and infamous on 60 Minutes, died on April 7th, 2012. He was 93.
　　A reporter with the presence2) of a performer, Mr. Wallace went head to head with chiefs of state, celebrities and con artists3) for more than 50 years, living for when “you forget the lights, the cameras, everything else, and you’re really talking to each other,” he said in an interview.
　　Mr. Wallace created enough such moments to become a paragon4) of television journalism in the heyday of network news. As he grilled5) his subjects, he said, he walked “a fine line between sadism6) and intellectual curiosity.”
　　His success often lay in the questions he hurled7), not the answers he received.
　　“Perjury8),” he said, in his staccato style, to President Richard M. Nixon’s right-hand man9), John D. Ehrlichman, while interviewing him during the Watergate affair10). “Plans to audit tax returns11) for political retaliation12). Theft of psychiatric records. Spying by undercover agents. Conspiracy to obstruct justice. All of this by the law-and-order administration of Richard Nixon.”
　　Mr. Ehrlichman paused and said, “Is there a question in there somewhere?”
　　No, Mr. Wallace later conceded. But it was riveting13) television.
　　Both the style and the substance of his work drew criticism. CBS paid Nixon’s chief of staff H. R. Haldeman $100,000 for exclusive interviews with Mr. Wallace in 1975. Critics called it checkbook journalism, and Mr. Wallace conceded later that was “a bad idea.”
　　Some subjects were unfazed by Mr. Wallace’s unblinking stare. When he sat down with the Ayatollah14) Khomeini, the Iranian leader, in 1979, he said that President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt “calls you, Imam15)—forgive me, his words, not mine—a lunatic.” The translator blanched16), but the Ayatollah responded, calmly calling Sadat a heretic17).
　　“Forgive me” was a favorite Wallace phrase, the caress before the garrote18). “As soon as you hear that,” he told The New York Times, “you realize the nasty question’s about to come.”
　　Mr. Wallace invented his hard-boiled persona on a program called Night Beat. Television was black and white, and so was the discourse, when the show went on in 1956, weeknights at 11, on the New York affiliate of the short-lived DuMont Television Network. 　　“We had lighting that was warts-and-all19) close-ups20),” he remembered. The camera closed in tighter and tighter on the guests. The smoke from Mr. Wallace’s cigarette swirled between him and his quarry. Sweat beaded on his subject’s brows.
　　“I was asking tough questions,” he said. “And I had found my bliss.” He had become Mike Wallace.
　　“All of a sudden,” he said, “I was no longer anonymous.” He was “the fiery prosecutor, the righteous and wrathful D.A.21) determined to rid Gotham City22) of its undesirables,” in the words of Michael J. Arlen, The New Yorker’s television critic.
　　Night Beat moved to ABC23) in 1957 as a half-hour, coast-to-coast, primetime program, renamed The Mike Wallace Interview. ABC promoted him as “the Terrible Torquemada24) of the TV Inquisition.”
　　Mr. Wallace’s career path meandered after ABC canceled The Mike Wallace Interview in 1958. He had done entertainment shows and quiz shows and cigarette commercials. He had acted onstage. But he resolved to become a real journalist after a harrowing journey to recover the body of his firstborn son, Peter, who died at 19 in a mountain-climbing accident in Greece in 1962.
　　“He was going to be a writer,” Mr. Wallace said in the interview with The Times. “And so I said, ‘I’m going to do something that would make Peter proud.’ ”
　　Forging a Career Path
　　He set his sights on25) CBS News and joined the network as a special correspondent. He was soon anchoring The CBS Morning News With Mike Wallace and reporting from Vietnam. Then he caught the eye of Richard Nixon.
　　Running for president, Nixon offered Mr. Wallace a job as his press secretary shortly before the 1968 primaries began. “I thought very, very seriously about it,” Mr. Wallace told The Times. “I regarded him with great respect. He was savvy, smart, hard working.”
　　But Mr. Wallace turned Nixon down, saying that putting a happy face on bad news was not his cup of tea.
　　Only months later 60 Minutes made its debut, at 10 pm on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 1968.
　　It was something new on the air: a “newsmagazine,” usually three substantial pieces of about 15 minutes each—a near-eternity on television. Mr. Wallace and Harry Reasoner26) were the first co-hosts, one fierce, one folksy27).
　　The show, which moved to Sunday nights at 7 in 1970, was slow to catch on. Creative conflict marked its climb to the top of the heap in the 1970s. Mr. Wallace fought his fellow correspondents for stories and airtime.
　　“There would be blood on the floor,” Mr. Wallace said in the interview. He said he developed the “not necessarily undeserved reputation” of being prickly and “of stealing stories from my colleagues.” “This was just competition,” he said. “Get the story. Get it first.” 　　The time was ripe for investigative television journalism. Watergate and its many seamy sideshows had made muckraking28) a respectable trade. By the late 1970s, 60 Minutes was the top-rated show on Sundays. Five different years it was the No. 1 show on television. In 1977, it began a 23-year run in the top 10. No show of any kind has matched that. Mr. Wallace was rich and famous and a powerful figure in television news when his life took a stressful turn in 1982.
　　That year he anchored a CBS Reports documentary called “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.” It led to a $120 million libel29) suit filed by Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the commander of American troops in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968. At issue was the show’s assertion that General Westmoreland had deliberately falsified the “order of battle30),” the estimate of the strength of the enemy.
　　The question turned on a decision that American military commanders made in 1967. The uniformed military said the enemy was no more than 300,000 strong, but intelligence analysts said the number could be half a million or more. If the analysts were correct, then there was no “light at the end of the tunnel,” the optimistic phrase General Westmoreland had used.
　　Documents declassified after the cold war showed that the general’s top aide had cited reasons of politics and public relations for insisting on the lower figure. The military was “stonewalling, obviously under orders” from General Westmoreland, a senior Central Intelligence Agency analyst cabled his headquarters; the “predetermined total” was “fixed on public-relations grounds.” The C.I.A.31) officially accepted the military’s invented figure of 299,000 enemy forces or fewer.
　　The documentary asserted that rather than a politically expedient lie, the struggle revealed a vast conspiracy to suppress the truth. The key theorist for that case, Sam Adams, a former C.I.A. analyst, was not only interviewed for the documentary but also received a consultant’s fee of $25,000. The show had arrived at something close to the truth, but it had used questionable means to that end.
　　After more than two years General Westmoreland abandoned his suit, CBS lost some of its reputation, and Mr. Wallace had a nervous breakdown.
　　He said at the time that he feared “the lawyers for the other side would employ the same techniques against me that I had employed on television.” Already on antidepressants, which gave him tremors, he had a waking nightmare sitting through the trial. 　　He attempted suicide. “I was so low that I wanted to exit,” Mr. Wallace said. “And I took a bunch of pills, and they were sleeping pills. And at least they would put me to sleep, and maybe I wouldn’t wake up, and that was fine.”
　　The despair and anger he felt over the documentary were outdone 13 years later when, as he put it in a memoir, “the corporate management of CBS emasculated a 60 Minutes documentary I had done just as we were preparing to put it on the air.”
　　The cutting involved a damning interview with Jeffrey Wigand, a chemist who had been director of research at Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company. The chemist said on camera that the nation’s tobacco executives had been lying when they swore under oath before Congress that they believed nicotine was not addictive. Among many complicating factors, one of those executives was the son of Laurence A. Tisch, the chairman of CBS at the time. The interview was not broadcast.
　　Mr. Wallace remained bitter at Mr. Tisch’s stewardship32), which ended when he sold CBS in 1995, after dismissing many employees and dismantling some of its parts.
　　Official “Retirement”
　　Mr. Wallace officially retired from 60 Minutes in 2006, after a 38-year run, at the age of 88. A few months later he was back on the program with an exclusive interview with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
　　He won his 21st Emmy33) for the interview.
　　And he kept working. Only weeks before his 2008 bypass surgery, he interviewed the baseball star Roger Clemens as accusations swirled that Mr. Clemens had used performance-enhancing drugs. It was Mr. Wallace’s last appearance on television, CBS said.
　　Myron Leon Wallace was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 9, 1918, one of four children of Friedan and Zina Wallik, who had come to the United States from a Russian shtetl34) before the turn of the 20th century.
　　Myron came out of Brookline High School with a B-minus average, worked his way through the University of Michigan, graduating in 1939.
　　After he graduated from college, he went almost immediately into radio, starting at $20 a week at a station with the call letters WOOD-WASH in Grand Rapids, Mich. He went on to Detroit and Chicago stations as narrator and actor on shows like The Lone Ranger, acquiring “Mike” as his broadcast name.
　　In 1943 he enlisted in the Navy, did a tour of duty35) in the Pacific and wound up as a lieutenant junior grade in charge of radio entertainment at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. 　　After three failed marriages, Mr. Wallace finally found his lifetime companion, Mary Yates, the widow of one of his best friends—his Night Beat producer, Ted Yates. They were married in 1986. Mr. Wallace said that Ms. Yates had saved his life when he came close to suicide before they married, and that their marriage had saved him afterward.
　　He also said that he had known since he was a child that he wanted to be on the air. He felt it was his calling. He said he wanted people to ask: “Who’s this guy, Myron Wallace?”
　　迈克·华莱士，哥伦比亚广播公司(译注：下文简称CBS)记者，美国最著名的新闻广播工作者之一，在《60分钟》节目中采访过许许多多英名远播或者臭名昭著的人物，赢得了“拷问者”的称号，于2012年4月7日辞世，享年93岁。
　　华莱士是个记者，但却拥有演员的风度。五十多年来，他与国家元首、社会名流乃至江湖骗子面对面侃侃而谈，生活的目标正如他在一次访谈中所说的那样，就是“忘掉灯光，忘掉摄像机，忘掉一切，实实在在地和对方交谈”。
　　华莱士创造了无数次这样的时刻，在网络新闻如日中天的时代，他成为电视新闻的杰出典范。他说自己在拷问受访者的同时，也是“在施虐心理和求知欲之间”走“钢丝”。
　　他的成功常常在于他所抛出的问题，而非他所得到的答案。
　　水门事件发生后，在采访理查德·M·尼克松总统的得力助手约翰·D·埃利希曼时，他以他那特有的不连贯方式说：“作伪证。为了政治报复而计划对纳税申报单进行审计。偷盗精神病病历档案。利用便衣侦探暗中监视。密谋妨碍司法公正。这些都是遵纪守法的理查德·尼克松政府干的好事。”
　　埃利希曼先生愣了一下，问：“这里面有需要回答的问题吗？”
　　没有，华莱士后来坦承说。但这让他的电视节目魅力尽现。
　　他的主持风格和节目的实质内容都曾引来指责。1975年，CBS曾支付尼克松的幕僚长H. R. 霍尔德曼十万美元，请他接受华莱士的独家专访。批评家称其为“有偿新闻”，华莱士后来也承认这是个“坏主意”。
　　面对华莱士目不转睛的凝视，有些受访者仍能泰然自若。1979年，当他采访伊朗什叶派领袖霍梅尼时，他告诉霍梅尼说，埃及总统安瓦尔·埃尔-萨达特“说伊玛目您是——请原谅，这是他说的，不是我的话——一个疯子。”翻译当时脸就白了，但这位什叶派领袖镇定自若地回答说：萨达特就是个异教徒。
　　“请原谅”是华莱士最喜欢说的话，这是把人送上绞刑架前温柔的抚慰。他曾对《纽约时报》说过：“只要听到这句话，你就知道马上要提刁钻难缠的问题了。”
　　华莱士强悍的主持形象是在一档名叫《晚间节奏》的节目中树立起来的。这档节目于1956年开播，每个工作日晚间11点播出，属于昙花一现的杜蒙特电视网纽约分公司。那时还是黑白电视，这档谈话节目的风格也是黑白分明。
　　“那时灯光很强，特写镜头能把所有面部瑕疵都暴露无遗。”他回忆道。镜头对着嘉宾越拉越近。华莱士抽着烟，烟雾缭绕在他和他的“猎物”中间。受访者的额头上汗珠直冒。
　　“我问的都是一些刁钻的问题，”他说，“我终于找到了自己的福音。”于是他成了尽人皆知的迈克·华莱士。
　　他说：“突然之间，我不再籍籍无名。”用《纽约客》电视评论员迈克尔·J·阿伦的话说，他成了“脾气火爆的公诉人，那个充满正义感、义愤填膺的地区检察官，一心要把不良分子清理出哥谭市”。
　　《晚间节奏》于1957年迁移到美国广播公司(译注：下文简称ABC)，改名为《迈克·华莱士访谈》，成了一档为期半小时的黄金时段节目，面向全美播出。ABC为他打的广告是“‘电视法庭’的恐怖审判官托克马达”。
　　1958年，ABC取消了《迈克·华莱士访谈》节目，之后华莱士的事业之路出现了一些波折。他先后做过娱乐节目、智力竞赛节目和香烟广告，还曾在舞台上做过表演。1962年，他的大儿子彼得在希腊的一次登山事故中不幸遇难，年仅19岁。华莱士踏上了寻找儿子尸体的悲恸之旅。自此以后，他下定决心要做一名真正的新闻工作者。
　　“他打算成为一名作家，”华莱士在接受《纽约时报》采访时说，“于是我告诉自己：‘我要做一些事情，一些让皮特感到自豪的事情。’”
　　铺就事业之路
　　他将目光投向了CBS新闻网，并加入该新闻网，成为一名特约记者。不久，他开始主持《迈克·华莱士CBS早间新闻》节目，并前往越南进行采访报道。接着，他引起了理查德·尼克松的关注。
　　当时尼克松正在竞选总统，在1968年总统预选开始前不久，尼克松邀请华莱士做他的新闻秘书。“我非常非常慎重地考虑过这个问题，”华莱士告诉《纽约时报》，“我非常敬重他。他头脑机敏，聪明而又勤奋。”
　　但华莱士还是拒绝了尼克松。他说，面对坏消息还要假装愉悦不是他的风格。
　　这之后仅仅几个月，在1968年9月24日，星期四晚上十点，《60分钟》首次亮相。
　　这是广播史上前所未有的创新：一种“新闻杂志”，通常包括三段重要话题，每段长约十五分钟——这几乎成了电视屏幕上经久不衰的一档节目。华莱士和哈里·里森纳是这档节目最早的主持搭档，两人一个强悍好斗，一个平易近人。
　　这档节目于1970年改到星期天晚上七点播出，并没有很快就红起来。20世纪70年代，在它攀登顶峰的过程中，一路伴随着创意上的冲突。华莱士常常得和他的记者同事们抢新闻，争夺开播时间。 　　“争夺异常惨烈。”华莱士在一次访谈中说道。他说，人们说他话中带刺，还“从同事那里偷新闻”，这种说法“并非毫无根据”。“这只是竞争而已，”他说，“目的就是抢新闻。要第一个抢到手。”
　　从事调查式电视新闻节目的时机已经成熟。水门事件及其诸多丑陋的穿插表演已经使揭发丑闻成为一种令人尊敬的行当。到20世纪70年代末，《60分钟》已经成为星期天收视率最高的节目，曾有五年都在电视节目中排名第一。自1977年开始，它连续23年都在十大排行榜之列。没有任何一种类型的节目能够与之媲美。华莱士也因此名利双收，成为电视新闻界举足轻重的人物。然而，1982年，他的人生遭遇了一次转变，让他体会到沉重的压力。
　　那一年，他在《CBS播报》节目中主持了一部名为《没有数清的敌人：一场越战骗局》的纪录片。这部片子使华莱士卷入了一场赔偿金高达1.2亿美元的诽谤案官司，原告为威廉·C·威斯特摩兰将军——1964～1968年越战期间美国军队司令官。争议的焦点是该纪录片声称威斯特摩兰将军故意谎报“战斗序列”，即在评估敌军战斗力时弄虚作假。
　　争议的问题直指1967年美军指挥官作出的一个决定。军方说敌军的力量只不过30万人，但情报分析人员却说真实的数目可能是50万，甚至更多。如果分析人员是对的，那么威斯特摩兰将军所描述的“隧道尽头的光明”这种乐观情形也就不存在了。
　　冷战后解密的文件表明，威斯特摩兰将军的高级参谋曾列举过坚称敌军人数较少的原因——都是政治和公共关系方面的原因。根据中央情报局一位资深分析师发给其总部的电报，军方“在制造障碍，显然是在执行(威斯特摩兰将军的)命令”，这种“事先确定的总数”是“建立在公共关系的基础上”的。中央情报局正式接受了军方虚构的敌军军力为29.9万或者更少的数据。
　　该纪录片断定，这种谎言并非政治上的权宜之计，而是一个掩盖事实真相的庞大阴谋。塞姆·亚当斯是整个事件的一个重要理论研究者，曾做过中央情报局的分析员，他不仅接受了纪录片的采访，还接受了一笔2.5万美元的顾问费。这部纪录片得出的结论的确接近了事实真相，但它为达到目的而采用的手段却值得质疑。
　　经过两年多的时间，威斯特摩兰将军最终撤诉了，但CBS的信誉因此蒙受了损失，华莱士的精神也几近崩溃。
　　他说，当时他担心“对方的律师会使用我在电视中使用的方法来对付我”。那时他已经在服用抗抑郁药了，药物使他身体产生了颤抖的毛病。整个审讯期间，他都像是在做一个清醒的噩梦。
　　他曾试图自杀。“我情绪低落，想一了百了，”华莱士说，“我服用了一大堆药物，都是安眠药。至少它们可以让我入睡，也许我再也不会醒来，那样就太好了。”
　　然而，这次纪录片事件给他带来的绝望和愤怒在13年后被另一件事超越了。其时，如他在回忆录中所写，“CBS公司管理方砍掉了《60分钟》的一部纪录片，这部片子我都做好了，正准备播出。”
　　砍掉的片子中有一段足以给相关人员定罪的专访，受访者是布朗与威廉姆森烟草公司研发部主任杰弗里·维甘德。这位化学家对着镜头说，美国烟草公司的管理人员在国会面前信誓旦旦地保证说他们坚信尼古丁没有成瘾性，但其实他们都在撒谎。这次事件牵涉到许多复杂的因素，其中之一就是在这些行政人员中，有一个人是时任CBS总裁的劳伦斯·A·蒂施的儿子。最终这次访谈没有播出。
　　此后华莱士一直对蒂施先生的管理工作耿耿于怀。1995年，在解雇了许多雇员、解散了一些机构后，蒂施先生卖掉了CBS，不再参与其管理。
　　正式“退休”
　　2006年，在连续主持了38年之后，华莱士从《60分钟》退了下来，那时他已88岁。几个月后，他又回到这个节目，对伊朗总统马哈茂德·艾哈迈迪-内贾德进行了专访。
　　因为这次专访，他第21次捧回了艾美奖。
　　他一直没有放下工作。2008年，在他心脏搭桥手术前仅几周的时间里，他还采访了棒球明星罗杰·克莱门斯，其时人们对克莱门斯先生的指责满天飞，说他使用了提升成绩的药物。CBS说，这是华莱士最后一次在电视上露面。
　　迈伦·里昂·华莱士于1918年5月9日生于马萨诸塞州布鲁克莱恩市，是弗莱顿和吉娜·沃里克四个孩子中的一个。他的父母在20世纪行将到来时从俄罗斯的一个犹太人小村庄来到了美国。
　　迈伦以B-的成绩毕业于布鲁克莱恩中学，后来通过努力考上了密歇根大学，于1939年毕业。
　　他几乎是大学一毕业就立刻去了无线电台，在密歇根州大急流市一家呼号为“WOOD-WASH”的电台工作，每周20美元的薪水。后来他又去了底特律和芝加哥的一些电台，在《孤独游侠》之类的节目中充当解说员和演员，获得了“迈克”这个播音艺名。
　　1943年，他加入了海军，在太平洋战区服役，后来到五大湖区海军训练站负责电台娱乐，中尉军衔。
　　在经历了三次失败的婚姻后，华莱士终于找到了自己的终身伴侣玛丽·叶慈——他最好的朋友以及《晚间节奏》的制作人泰德·叶慈的遗孀。他们于1986年结婚。华莱士说，在他们结婚之前，就在他快要自杀的时候，叶慈女士拯救了他的生命，而此后，他们的婚姻又挽救了他的生活。
　　他还说，他从小就知道自己要从事广播电视事业。他觉得那是命运对他的召唤。他说他希望人们会这样问：“迈伦·华莱士？这个家伙是谁？”
　　1. CBS：哥伦比亚广播公司(Columbia Broadcasting System)，成立于1927年，为美国三大商业广播电视公司之一。
　　2. presence [?prez(?)ns] n. (演员的)表演风度；(尤指演员等舞台风度的)潇洒，洒脱
　　3. con artist：[俚]骗子，以花言巧语骗人的人
　　4. paragon [?p?r?ɡ?n] n. 典型，模范
　　5. grill [ɡr?l] vt. 拷问，无休止地盘问
　　6. sadism [?se?d?z(?)m] n. [心]施虐的快感；施虐欲 　　7. hurl [h??(r)l] vt. 用力投掷，扔
　　8. perjury [?p??(r)d??ri] n. 伪誓，伪证
　　9. right-hand man：得力助手
　　10. Watergate affair：水门事件，美国历史上的政治丑闻之一。1972年6月17日，共和党竞选连任委员会派人潜入水门大厦民主党总部安装窃听器。此事暴露后，尼克松总统辞职。
　　11. tax return：纳税申报单
　　12. retaliation [r??t?li?e??(?)n] n. 报复，报仇
　　13. rivet [?r?v?t] vt. 吸引住(注意力等)
　　14. ayatollah [?a???t?l?] n. [伊斯兰教]阿亚图拉(对伊朗等国伊斯兰教什叶派宗教领袖和法学权威的尊称)
　　15. Imam：伊玛目，原指阿拉伯语中的“领袖”。在伊斯兰教创立的最初几个世纪，伊玛目一词用以称呼逊尼派及什叶派的伊斯兰帝国领袖。
　　16. blanch [blɑ?nt?] vi. 发白或变苍白
　　17. heretic [?her?t?k] n. 异教徒，异端者
　　18. garrote [ɡ??r?t] n. 绞死；绞刑
　　19. warts and all：不掩盖任何瑕疵；包括缺点在内
　　20. close-up：特写镜头
　　21. D.A.：地区检察官(District Attorney)
　　22. Gotham City：哥谭市，纽约市的别名
　　23. ABC：美国广播公司(American Broadcasting Company)，美国三大传统广播电视公司之一，成立于1943年。
　　24. Torquemada：托克马达，巴塞罗那宗教裁判所地牢里的大审判官
　　25. set one’s sights on：把……定为奋斗目标，极其渴望获得(或达到)
　　26. Harry Reasoner：哈里·里森纳(1923～1991)，美国广播公司和哥伦比亚广播公司新闻工作者，《60分钟》节目的创办者之一
　　27. folksy [?f??ksi] adj. 亲切的，和蔼可亲的
　　28. muckrake [?m?k?re?k] vt. 揭发
　　29. libel [?la?b(?)l] n. 诽谤
　　30. order of battle：战斗序列(一个武装部队的标志、指挥系统、实力、人员、装备及部门的配置)
　　31. C.I.A.：中央情报局(Central Intelligence Agency)，美国最大的情报机构
　　32. stewardship [?stju??(r)d??p] n. 管理工作，代管工作
　　33. Emmy：艾美奖，美国电视界的最高奖项，分为美国艾美奖和国际艾美奖。
　　34. shtetl [?tetl] n. (尤指第二次世界大战前东欧的)犹太人小村(或小镇)
　　35. tour of duty：任期，服役期