纽约时报 保守派媒体恶有恶报(4)

And yet that may be where conservative media outlets find themselves.

然而，这可能是保守派媒体发现自己的地方。

In the hours after the storming of Congress, Sean Spicer, Trump's former press secretary and now the host of a Newsmax show, baselessly suggested it was a false-flag operation:

在国会风暴过后的几个小时里，特朗普的前新闻发言人、现任新闻极限节目主持人肖恩·斯派塞毫无根据地表示这是一次虚假事件：

"We've got to make sure that who was responsible, why they were there, if there was mischief, if Antifa was there," he said, because "it shouldn't be blamed on groups that weren't responsible."

“我们必须确定负责人是谁，他们为什么在那里，是否有恶作剧，是否有反法西斯行动。”因为“不应该把责任归咎于那些没有责任的组织。”

Greg Kelly, the channel's star anchor, echoed that notion: "These people don't look like Trump supporters," he said.

该频道明星主播格雷格·凯利也表达了这一观点：“这些人看起来不像特朗普的支持者。”

After the elections, those on the supply side of the conservative media equation -

在选举之后，保守派媒体的供应方——

especially Fox, a huge corporate entity with significantly more to lose than its smaller rivals -

尤其是福克斯，这个巨大的公司实体，其损失要远远大于其较小的竞争对手——

believed their greatest challenge was how, exactly, to serve the audience's demands without running afoul of libel law.

相信他们最大的挑战就是如何，准确地说，在不触犯诽谤法的情况下满足观众的要求。

After Jan. 6, it should be clear to conservative media organizations that the stakes of this game are much, much higher.

1月6日之后，保守派媒体应该清楚地看到，这场游戏的赌注要高得多。

One solution, of course, is not to give voice to unhinged views at all.

当然，有一个解决办法，那就是根本不让那些精神错乱的观点出现。

In late December, Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow and a big pusher of pro-Trump conspiracy theories,

去年12月下旬，MyPillow首席执行官、亲特朗普阴谋论的推动者迈克·林德尔，

appeared on a Newsmax show guest-hosted by Sebastian Gorka, traditionally one of the most boisterous Trump cheerleaders in all of conservative media.

出现在由塞巴斯蒂安·戈尔卡作为嘉宾主持的新闻极限节目中，戈尔卡是所有保守派媒体人中最喧闹的特朗普支持者之一。

Lindell was about to launch into claims about another voting-technology company,

林德尔正要对另一家投票技术公司多米尼克提出索赔，

Dominion (which had also sent Newsmax a threatening letter and would later file a $1.3 billion libel suit against Sidney Powell, a former Trump campaign lawyer), when Gorka abruptly cut him off.

多米尼克也曾向新闻极限发出威胁信，随后将对特朗普前竞选律师西德尼·鲍威尔提起13亿美元的诽谤诉讼。当时戈尔卡突然切断了他的联系。

"Mike. Mike. I don't want to discuss - Mike," Gorka pleaded.

“迈克，迈克，我不想讨论——迈克，”戈尔卡恳求道。

"Mike, we're not going to get into the minutiae of the details."

“迈克，我们不打算详说细节。”

Like the handful of Republican senators who quickly dropped their objections to certifying Biden's election late in the night of Jan. 6,

就像少数共和党参议员在1月6日深夜迅速放弃了对拜登当选的反对意见一样，

Gorka had, very suddenly, become a model of responsible caution.

戈尔卡突然成了负责任的谨慎典范。