VOA慢速英语2013 南非网站寻找真相

 

AS IT IS 2013-08-29 South Africa Website Searches for Truth 南非网站寻找真相

Hello!  How are you today?  Thanks for joining us for another edition of As It Is on VOA.  I’m Jim Tedder¹ in Washington.  Tighten your seat belts and fly with us to South Africa to hear about the search for truth.  If you often find yourself questioning what some politician says, then you’ll want to listen to our first report closely. 

And then we’ll reach into the “in case you missed it” folder², and look back nearly five decades at something that had the entire world looking up in wonder.  As It Is, sound coming out of your radio, and on your computer, As It Is ...is headed your way!

You can’t always believe what people say, or write in newspapers, or tell you on the radio or television.  But you knew that.  Wouldn’t it be helpful to have someone always on the lookout³, searching for the truth?  Well, in South Africa there is a “facts watchdog,” a website that checks facts. It is called “Africa Checks.”  It reports on claims made by the country’s leaders and the media. The site also investigates common statements that are repeated many times by people without evidence.

People often say, for example, that Johannesburg has the largest forest made by man in the world.  That statement is easy to believe.  The city’s greenery covers many neighborhoods. But the statement is not true!  Africa Check found that the largest man-made forest is in China, next to the Gobi Desert.

Africa Check’s job is to straighten out wrong claims and political untruths.  It also tries to keep stories about famous people truthful⁴,  or to provide information so the media will not publish false stories.

Julian Rademeyer is the editor of the site.  He says it tries to get people to look with doubt at suspicious⁵ claims.

“I think the fundamental element of our work is that we are trying to get people to question what they are told, what they read, what politicians say to them, and to look at the information and to ask ‘Where is the evidence?’  If someone makes a claim, to ask, ‘Where is the evidence to support that claim?’  Let’s actually interrogate⁶ those claims, and not accept things purely⁷ for what they are.”

Agence France Press Foundation launched the website in June, 2012. Africa Check is the first media outlet⁸ in South Africa whose single purpose is to check facts.  It follows the example of popular sites in the United States like Politifact and Factcheck.

Mr. Rademeyer and a researcher are the site’s two full-time⁹ employees.  A team of part-time reporters also work on fact checking.

South Africa has a strong history of investigative journalism¹⁰ and photography from the country’s apartheid period.  That was a time of legally enforced racial separation.  But Mr. Rademeyer says reduced budgets and fewer reporters in the country now harm the ability to establish the truth of some claims.

“It allows public figures and it allows politicians to make claims that don’t go checked.  And I think that’s where we play a role.  We come in and look at those claims and we have the ability and the time to go through those claims.”

Paula Fray¹¹ is the former editor of the Star Newspaper and a commentator¹² on the media.  She says Africa Check may place needed pressures on newsrooms.

“At the moment Africa Check is not known as much as I’m hoping as it is going to be known.  I’m hoping that eventually journalists will be writing their stories and thinking, if my news editor doesn’t pick up that something hasn’t been verified, Africa Check might pick up that it hasn’t been verified.  So I’m not going to put anything in my stories unless I can prove it.”

She hopes Africa Check will create a better culture of responsible journalism. The site also deals with stories that get repeated so often that they go unchecked.

For example, a South African musician with 175,000 Facebook followers¹³ claimed that white South Africans are being killed at frightening rate.  When Africa Check looked into that story, it found that most of the musician’s claims were untrue or overstated.

But the report also demonstrated one of the problems with South African statistics¹⁴ from the apartheid period.  Mr. Rademeyer said crime information from that period in South Africa for white neighborhoods is generally quite correct.  But he said crime reporting from homelands and townships during apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s lacked statistics.

Africa Check has also corrected claims including some about statements about traditional healing and the country’s rate of people seeking refuge¹⁵.

Look! Up in the Sky!  Isn’t that Ed White? 

And now, a bit of history.  Space history.  Nearly 50 years ago this summer, some amazing happened. People around the world listened to their radios and watched their televisions to see and hear reports about a man who was risking his life, in the name of science, thousands of kilometers above us.  VOA’s Christopher Cruise¹⁶ says he remembers it well.

Forty-eight years ago, astronaut Edward White became the first American to walk in space. White climbed out of his Gemini space vehicle 216 kilometers above the earth. But he remained connected to the two-man spacecraft by a seven-meter-long lifeline that gave him oxygen.

It also let him communicate with space flight controllers on the ground.

White was having so much fun that he stayed outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes -- 8 minutes longer than planned. The flight director in Houston had to order him to get back inside.

HOUSTON: “Gemini Four (this is) Houston. Gemini Four (this is) Houston.”

GEMINI:  “Let’s see what the flight director has got to say.”

HOUSTON: “The flight director says ‘Get back in!’”

GEMINI: “This is Jim. You got any message for us?”

HOUSTON: “Gemini Four! Get back in!”

GEMINI: “OK”

White was not the first human to walk in space. A few months earlier -- on March 18th, 1963, Soviet¹⁷ cosmonaut Alexi Leonov floated in space for ten minutes while connected to his Voskhod II spacecraft.

The two spacewalks showed that human beings could work outside their spacecraft. Less than two years after his historic¹⁸ spacewalk, Edward White died in a fire while training for another space mission.   

I’m Christopher Cruise.

And I’m Jim Tedder in Washington.  We are lighting¹⁹ the birthday candles today for, among other people, William Friedkin, the movie director who won an Oscar for the scariest film ever made …The Exorcist.  If you would like to suggest another, please do so in an email.  Mr. Friedkin is 74.  Actor Richard Gere turns 64, and …we also remember … it is the birthdate of Charlie “Byrd” Parker, who may just have been the greatest jazz saxophone player of all time.  He is remembered as one of the fathers of “bop” or “bebop.”  Charlie was born in 1920, but was only 34 when he died in Rochester, New York, in 1955.

1 tedder   

n.（干草）翻晒者，翻晒机

参考例句：

• Jim Tedder has more. 吉姆？特德将给我们做更多的介绍。 来自互联网
• Jim Tedder tells us more. 吉姆？泰德给我们带来更详细的报道。 来自互联网

2 folder   

n.纸夹，文件夹

参考例句：

• Peter returned the plan and charts to their folder.彼得把这份计划和表格放回文件夹中。
• He draws the document from its folder.他把文件从硬纸夹里抽出来。

3 lookout   

n.注意，前途，瞭望台

参考例句：

• You can see everything around from the lookout.从了望台上你可以看清周围的一切。
• It's a bad lookout for the company if interest rates don't come down.如果利率降不下来，公司的前景可就不妙了。

4 truthful   

adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的

参考例句：

• You can count on him for a truthful report of the accident.你放心，他会对事故作出如实的报告的。
• I don't think you are being entirely truthful.我认为你并没全讲真话。

5 suspicious   

adj.可疑的，容易引起怀疑的，猜疑的，疑心的

参考例句：

• A man was hanging about the house in a suspicious manner.一个男人在房子周围可疑地荡来荡去。
• He's so suspicious he would distrust his own mother.他这个人疑心太重，连自己的母亲也不相信。

6 interrogate   

vt.讯问，审问，盘问

参考例句：

• The lawyer took a long time to interrogate the witness fully.律师花了很长时间仔细询问目击者。
• We will interrogate the two suspects separately.我们要对这两个嫌疑人单独进行审讯。

7 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

8 outlet   

n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄

参考例句：

• The outlet of a water pipe was blocked.水管的出水口堵住了。
• Running is a good outlet for his energy.跑步是他发泄过剩精力的好方法。

9 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

10 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

11 fray   

v.争吵；打斗；磨损，磨破；n.吵架；打斗

参考例句：

• Why should you get involved in their fray?你为什么要介入他们的争吵呢？
• Tempers began to fray in the hot weather.大热天脾气烦燥。

12 commentator   

n.注释者，解说者；实况广播评论员

参考例句：

• He is a good commentator because he can get across the game.他能简单地解说这场比赛，是个好的解说者。
• The commentator made a big mistake during the live broadcast.在直播节目中评论员犯了个大错误。

13 followers   

追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件

参考例句：

• the followers of Mahatma Gandhi 圣雄甘地的拥护者
• The reformer soon gathered a band of followers round him. 改革者很快就获得一群追随者支持他。

14 statistics   

n.统计，统计数字，统计学

参考例句：

• We have statistics for the last year.我们有去年的统计资料。
• Statistics is taught in many colleges.许多大学都教授统计学。

15 refuge   

n.避难（处），庇护（所）；v.庇护，避难（所）

参考例句：

• They took refuge in a cave yesterday.他们昨天是在一个洞里避难的。
• We took refuge in the lee of the wall.我们在墙的背风处暂避。

16 cruise   

v.巡航，航游，缓慢巡行；n.海上航游

参考例句：

• They went on a cruise to Tenerife.他们乘船去特纳利夫岛。
• She wants to cruise the canals of France in a barge.她想乘驳船游览法国的运河。

17 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

18 historic   

adj.历史上著名的，具有历史意义的

参考例句：

• This is a historic occasion.这是具有重大历史意义的时刻。
• We are living in a great historic era.我们正处在一个伟大的历史时代。

19 lighting   

n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光

参考例句：

• The gas lamp gradually lost ground to electric lighting.煤气灯逐渐为电灯所代替。
• The lighting in that restaurant is soft and romantic.那个餐馆照明柔和而且浪漫。