《新版新概念英语第三册(英音)Lesson (05)》歌词

[00:00:02] Lesson 5

[00:00:03] The facts

[00:00:10] What was the consequence of the editor's insistence on facts and statistics?

[00:00:17] Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes

[00:00:22] to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statistics.

[00:00:27] Last year a journalist had been instructed by a well-known magazine

[00:00:32] to write an article on the president's palace in a new African republic.

[00:00:38] When the article arrived,

[00:00:40] the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it.

[00:00:45] The article began:

[00:00:47] Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace.'

[00:00:53] The editor at once sent the journalist a fax

[00:00:57] instructing him to find out the exact number of steps and the height of the wall

[00:01:04] The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts,

[00:01:09] but he took a long time to send them.

[00:01:12] Meanwhile,the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press.

[00:01:19] He sent the journalist two more faxes,but received no reply.

[00:01:25] He sent yet another fax informing the journalist

[00:01:29] that if he did not reply soon he would be fired.

[00:01:33] When the journalist again failed to reply,

[00:01:38] the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written.

[00:01:43] A week later,the editor at last received a fax from the journalist.

[00:01:49] Not only had the poor man been arrested, but he had been sent to prison as well.

[00:01:55] However,he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he informed the editor

[00:02:01] that he had been arrested while counting the 1,084 steps

[00:02:07] leading to the 15 foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.