纽约时报 保守派媒体恶有恶报(1)

Conservative media reaps the whirlwind.

保守派媒体恶有恶报

By Jason Zengerle

文/杰森·曾格勒

On a Friday in late December, people who tuned in to "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Fox Business encountered something they had most likely never seen before: a subdued, uncertain Lou Dobbs.

12月下旬的一个星期五，收看福克斯商业频道《老杜今夜论衡》节目的人遇到了一件他们以前从未见过的事情：他们看到了一个低迷的、含糊的卢·道布斯。

"There are a lot of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software," Dobbs said, his usual bombast strangely absent.

“关于选举的公正性、邮寄投票的不规范性、选举投票机和投票软件的不规范性，人们有很多意见，”道布斯说道，他一贯的夸夸其谈居然消失不见了。

"One of the companies," he continued, "is Smartmatic."

他接着说：“其中一家公司是Smartmatic。”

He introduced Eddie Perez, an election-security expert, to assess "recent claims about the company."

他介绍了选举安全专家埃迪·佩雷斯来评估“最近有关该公司的一些言论”。

Then the show cut to a two-minute, prerecorded interview in which Perez vouched for Smartmatic's integrity — after which "Lou Dobbs Tonight" went straight to commercial.

然后，节目切换到事先录制的两分钟采访：佩雷斯证明了Smartmatic公司的公正性。之后，《老杜今夜论衡》就播了广告。

This was a major departure from the norm.

这完全不合常规。

In the weeks after the November election, Dobbs had spent most of his prime-time hour on a farrago of conspiracy theories about how Donald Trump had actually defeated Joe Biden.

在11月大选后的几周里，道布斯占用了大部分黄金时段来讲阴谋论，关于唐纳德·特朗普是如何击败乔·拜登的阴谋论。

Among his favorites was one involving Smartmatic, which — according to Dobbs and various guests — was founded by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who died in 2013, and sat at the center of a plot to rig the election.

他最喜欢的是一个涉及Smartmatic的网站，据道布斯和其他嘉宾说，该网站是由2013年去世的委内瑞拉总统乌戈·查韦斯创建的，该网站涉嫌操纵选举。

The interview with Perez lacked the usual Dobbs fervor.

道布斯对佩雷斯的采访少了他一贯的热情。

Perez calmly responded to questions from an unidentified interlocutor, all asked in the flat tone of an automatic voice generator.

佩雷斯平静地回答了一位身份不明的对话者的问题，所有问题的声音都是由自动语音生成器生成的平调。

Each answer laid waste to Dobbs's coverage of Smartmatic, and yet the segment was so grudging that it had the feel of the legal disclaimer at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial.

每一个答案都糟蹋了道布斯对Smartmatic的报道，然而这一部分带着浓重的怨恨，就像医药广告结尾的免责声明一样不情愿。