The moment of revelation arrived a decade ago, after midnight and more than one glass of wine. I was in a London taxi, sharing a ride with a public relations man I know, following a dinner we had both attended.
启示时刻在十年前的某个后半夜来临，在我喝了不止一杯葡萄酒之后。我在一辆伦敦出租车上，与我认识的一位公关人士共乘，之前我们都参加了一场晚宴。
Journalists and PR people have fundamentally different agendas: we have stories to break; they are paid to make sure some stories remain untold. Yet our daily dealings can be quite cordial, even when we’re not sharing wine and cabs. For one thing, PRs read our stories; it’s hard not to like them a bit.
记者和公关人员有着截然不同的目标：我们要爆料；他们则收钱确保一些故事一直不为人知。然而，即使在我们没有一起喝葡萄酒和共乘出租车的时候，我们的日常交流也可以很热络。比如，公关人员会读我们的报道；很难不对他们有点好感。
Many also have a way with words and, as we drove through London that night, I remember my fellow passenger making a pithy, if mildly inebriated, observation. “My job,” he admitted, “is to sow doubt.”
许多公关人员还能说会道，我们那天晚上共乘出租车在伦敦穿行的时候，我记得我的同乘者说了句精辟的话，尽管略带醉意。“我的工作，”他承认，“是播种怀疑。”
I remembered the times I had called him, looking to confirm a tale I had pieced together from sources far from the press office, only to be told: “Off the record, you haven’t quite got the full picture.” Or the occasions on which he had dodged my probing by questioning my sources’ knowledge, motives or very existence.
我记得我曾打电话给他，希望证实我根据远离新闻办公室的信息源拼出的一个故事，结果只是被告知：“不能公开发表，你没有了解全部情况。”还有一次，他通过质疑我的信息源的知识、动机或是否真的存在而回避了我的刨根问底。