Last week I watched a video that made me wince in horror. It showed a black teenager from the Bronx, Kalief Browder, being savagely beaten by prison officers and fellow inmates at Rikers Island prison in New York. That footage, captured by the prison’s surveillance system, was bad enough. Even more chilling was the backstory, revealed by a haunting piece of investigative reporting in The New Yorker magazine last year: Browder was in prison because, at the age of 16, he was accused of stealing a backpack and detained.
我不久前看了一个让人不寒而栗的视频。视频上，来自布朗克斯区(Bronx)的黑人少年卡利夫•布劳德(Kalief Browder)在纽约赖克斯岛(Rikers Island)监狱遭到狱警和其他犯人的毒打。这段由监狱监控系统拍摄下来的影像已经足够触目惊心，更让人感到遍体生寒的是《纽约客》(The New Yorker)杂志去年刊载的一篇让人过目难忘的调查性报道揭露出来的幕后故事：布劳德之所以入狱，是因为他在16岁时被指控偷窃一个背包并遭到拘留。
As it happens, in 2013 he was released having been deemed innocent. But that verdict was reached only after he had been in prison for three years, waiting for his day in court, a victim of a justice system whose wheels can grind extremely slowly, particularly for anyone who is poor. (Browder’s family was unable to afford the $3,000 bail to release him.)
结果他在2013年被无罪释放。但这一裁决到来之前，为了等待上庭，布劳德已经在监狱中度过了3年。司法体系处理案件的进度可能异常缓慢，尤其是对穷人来说，布劳德正是这一体系的受害者（他的家人付不起3000美元的保释金）。During his long confinement, Browder was badly mistreated because he repeatedly rebelled and proclaimed his innocence. This left terrible scars. So much so that last week, tragically, the 22-year-old Browder committed suicide, prompting The New Yorker and others to reprise the shameful tale and re-release the Rikers surveillance footage.
在布劳德漫长的监禁中，因为多次反抗并声称自己是无辜的，他遭到了残酷的对待。这给他留下了极为严重的创伤，以至于22岁的布劳德最终于本月自杀身亡。这一悲剧促使《纽约客》和其他人重新提起这个可耻的故事，并再次公开赖克斯岛监狱的监控视频。
The story is horrifying on many levels. Back in the days when I was a reporter in the Soviet Union, Americans would howl in outrage at the idea that Soviet citizens could be tossed into prison for months on end without trial. Browder’s tale, however, shows that it remains a struggle to protect human rights within America’s own shores — even in a prison that lies a few short miles from some of the most gilded and liberal neighbourhoods of New York.
从很多方面来说，这都是一个骇人的故事。在我还在前苏联地区做记者的时候，对于未经审讯的苏联公民可能被投入监狱长达数月，美国人会予以愤怒的呼喊。然而，布劳德的故事表明，就在美国国内，保护人权依然是一场艰苦卓绝的斗争——哪怕是在距离纽约最富裕、最自由的街区短短几英里之外的一所监狱里也是这样。While it would be nice to think (or hope) that the mistreatment at Rikers was extreme, criminal-justice activists insist that Browder’s tragedy was far from an isolated case — and neither was his demographic profile. Today, around 40 per cent of the more than 2 million inmates of American prisons are black, though they represent just 13 per cent of the American public. On current statistical trends, more than a quarter of all American black men can expect to enter prison at some point during their lifetime, due to a pernicious combination of poverty, inadequate education, joblessness, racism — and a Kafkaesque legal bureaucracy that often leaves poor people vulnerable to endless delays and mistakes.
我们或许能够自我安慰地认为（或者希望）赖克斯岛监狱中发生的暴行是极端事件，但关注司法公正的活动人士坚称，布劳德的悲剧远非个案——从他的人口特征来说也并非如此。今天，尽管黑人只占美国总人口的13%，美国监狱中逾200万入狱者中约40%是黑人。从目前的统计趋势来看，贫困、教育水平低下、无业、种族主义及卡夫卡式法律官僚机构（经常让穷人遭受无休止的延迟和失误）共同造成的恶性影响，预计将使超过四分之一的美国黑人在一生中的某个时间点入狱。Amid this shameful litany, however, there is a tiny point of light. For what the Browder tale also reminds us is that investigative journalism is not just alive and well in America and elsewhere today but has as powerful a role as ever to play in making the world a little better (or at least, less bad).
然而，在这可耻的一长串问题中，有一个小小的闪光点。布劳德的故事告诉我们，调查性新闻不仅在美国和其他地方保有鲜活的生命力，而且一如既往地在使世界变得更好一点（或者至少，变得不那么糟糕）方面起到强大的作用。Yes, I know that it might seem self-interested for me, an FT journalist, to point this out. But it is still worth shouting about. After all, there is a widespread perception these days that the traditional media are in terminal decline, unable to compete in a world where kittens and Kardashians dominate social media and the rest of cyberspace. But, as Michael Wolff insists in his provocative new book Television Is the New Television, the reality of modern media is far more nuanced than the cliché presumes. Yes, the Kardashians grab endless attention. But media formats that seemed to be heading for extinction a few years ago — such as television — are still flourishing too.
是的，我知道身为英国《金融时报》记者指出这一点或许像是一种自利行为。但这依然值得大声宣扬。毕竟，近来普遍的看法是传统媒体正走向末路，无法在一个小猫和卡戴珊家族(Kardashian)风行社交媒体和其他网络空间的世界竞争。但就如迈克尔•沃尔夫(Michael Wolff)在其引起争议的新作《Television Is the New Television》中坚持的观点，现代媒体的现实远比老生常谈的观点要微妙得多。的确，卡戴珊家族无休止地攫取着人们的注意力。但几年前看似即将走向灭亡的媒体形式——比如电视——至今依然在繁荣发展。. . .
. . .So is investigative journalism (albeit not in such a commercially successful manner as television shows). Today, there are certainly fewer mainstream newspapers running big investigative reporting teams but non-profits have sprung up instead: to cite just one example, Bill Keller, the former editor of The New York Times, now heads the Marshall Project, a non-profit organisation focused on the criminal justice system. And investigations are still being carried out by the traditional platforms, be that The New York Times, the FT — or, as in this case, The New Yorker.
调查性新闻也是如此（尽管不像电视节目那样享受着商业上的成功）。今天，拥有大规模调查性报道团队的主流报纸的确减少了，但非营利性组织的兴起填补了其中的空缺：仅举一例，《纽约时报》(The New York Times)原主编比尔•凯勒(Bill Keller)现在是致力于司法公正的非营利性组织Marshall Project的负责人。传统的平台也依然在进行调查——可能是《纽约时报》、英国《金融时报》，或者披露布劳德故事的《纽约客》。Of course, as a cynic might comment, it is a crying shame that it took the horrible tale of Browder to stir debate about the prison system. It is even more lamentable that reforms remain piecemeal. Although The New Yorker report helped to prod New York mayor Bill de Blasio into announcing new oversight of Rikers and changes in justice protocols, accounts of abuse continue apace.
当然，愤世嫉俗的人或许会评论，利用布劳德骇人听闻的故事激起关于监狱系统的辩论简直是可悲。但更加可悲的是改革依然只是零敲碎打。尽管《纽约客》的报道促使纽约市长比尔•德布拉西奥(Bill de Blasio)宣布对赖克斯岛监狱采取新的监督措施，并修改司法条例，有关监狱虐待的报道依然层出不穷。The fact is, however, that if The New Yorker had never written about Browder’s tragic tale — and disseminated that shocking surveillance footage — few people would have known about the horrors happening on Rikers Island. That’s worth remembering this week, not least because it prompts another question: how many more Browders are still rotting in American jails; and what might we see if we could all watch those prison surveillance cameras? Or if a philanthropist were to give every prisoner a video-equipped smartphone?
然而，事实是如果《纽约客》永远没有报道布劳德的悲剧——并发布那段令人震惊的监控影像——几乎没人会获知赖克斯岛监狱上演的恐怖场景。这一点值得铭记，尤其是因为它引出了另一个问题：还有多少布劳德在美国的监狱里遭受折磨？如果我们能看到所有的监狱监控摄像头，我们会看到什么？或者如果有个慈善家给每个囚犯一部带摄像头的智能手机，我们又会看到什么？