PETER BAKER2025年2月27日2004年，前克里姆林宫新闻中心记者叶莲娜·特列古波娃的公寓外发生爆炸，事后她在家附近接受采访。特列古波娃曾对普京总统提出过严厉批评。 Maxim Marmur/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesShe asked too many questions that the president didn’t like. She reported too much about criticism of his administration. And so, before long, Yelena Tregubova was pushed out of the Kremlin press pool that covered President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.她问了太多总统不喜欢的问题。她报道了太多对他政府的批评。因此，没过多久，叶莲娜·特列古波娃就被赶出了报道俄罗斯总统普京的克里姆林宫记者团。In the scheme of things, it was a small moment, all but forgotten nearly 25 years later. But it was also a telling one. Mr. Putin did not care for challenges. The rest of the press pool got the message and eventually became what the Kremlin wanted it to be: a collection of compliant reporters who knew to toe the line or else they would pay a price.这在一系列的事件中只是一个小插曲，时过25年，几乎已经被人遗忘。但这也是一个有说服力的时刻。普京不喜欢挑战。记者团的其他成员领会了这一信息，他们最终变成了克里姆林宫所希望的样子：一群顺从的记者，他们知道要守规矩，否则就要付出代价。The decision by President Trump’s team to handpick which news organizations can participate in the White House press pool that questions him in the Oval Office or travels with him on Air Force One is a step in a direction that no modern American president of either party has ever taken. The White House said it was a privilege, not a right, to have such access, and that it wanted to open space for “new media” outlets, including those that just so happen to support Mr. Trump.特朗普总统的团队决定精心挑选哪些新闻机构可以参加白宫记者团，在椭圆形办公室向他提问，或者与他一起乘坐空军一号，这是现代美国两党总统都未曾迈出的一步。白宫表示，拥有这样的采访渠道是一种特权，而不是权利，它希望为“新媒体”机构开放空间，包括那些恰好支持特朗普的媒体。But after the White House’s decision to bar the venerable Associated Press as punishment for its coverage, the message is clear: Any journalist can be expelled from the pool at any time for any reason. There are worse penalties, as Ms. Tregubova would later discover, but in Moscow, at least, her eviction was an early step down a very slippery slope.但是，白宫决定将备受尊敬的美联社拒之门外，作为对其报道的惩罚，此举所传达的信息是明确的：任何记者都可以在任何时候以任何理由被驱逐出报道人员之列。正如特列古波娃后来发现的那样，还有更严厉的惩罚，但至少在莫斯科，她被驱逐只是恶性滑坡的开始。The United States is not Russia by any means, and any comparisons risk going too far. Russia barely had any history with democracy then, while American institutions have endured for nearly 250 years. But for those of us who reported there a quarter century ago, Mr. Trump’s Washington is bringing back memories of Mr. Putin’s Moscow in the early days.美国无论如何都不是俄罗斯，任何比较都有可能太过份了。当时俄罗斯几乎没有民主的历史，而美国的制度已经延续了近250年。但是，对于我们这些25年前在俄罗斯做过报道的人来说，特朗普的华盛顿让人想起普京早期的莫斯科。The news media is being pressured. Lawmakers have been tamed. Career officials deemed disloyal are being fired. Prosecutors named by a president who promised “retribution” are targeting perceived adversaries and dropping cases against allies or others who do his bidding. Billionaire tycoons who once considered themselves masters of the universe are prostrating themselves before him.新闻媒体受到压力。立法者被驯服了。被认为不忠的职业官员将被解雇。由承诺“报复”的总统任命的检察官正将目标对准他眼中的对手，并撤销针对他的盟友乃至其他听命于他的人的案件。曾经认为自己是宇宙主宰的亿万富翁们纷纷拜倒在他面前。Judges who temporarily block administration decisions that they believe may be illegal are being threatened with impeachment. The uniformed military, which resisted being used as a political instrument in Mr. Trump’s first term, has now been purged of its highest-ranking officers and lawyers. And a president who calls himself “the king,” ostensibly in jest, is teasing that he may try to stay in power beyond the limits of the Constitution.法官如果暂时阻止他们认为可能违法的政府决定，就会受到弹劾威胁。在特朗普的第一个任期内，军方拒绝被用作政治工具，现在，军方最高级别的军官和律师已被清洗。这位自称“国王”的总统表面上是在开玩笑，实际上却在暗示他可能会试图超越宪法的限制继续掌权。Some versions of this are not new, of course. Other presidents have taken actions that looked heavy-handed or put pressure on opponents. No president in my experience at the White House, which goes back to 1996, particularly liked news coverage of him, and certainly there have been times when journalists were penalized for their reporting.当然，这种做法的某些版本并不新鲜。其他总统也曾采取过看起来很强硬的行动，或者向对手施压。我在白宫的工作可以追溯到1996年，在这段经历中，没有哪位总统特别喜欢有关他的新闻报道，当然也有记者因报道而受到惩罚的时候。After an article on whether Vice President Dick Cheney might be dropped from the re-election ticket in 2004, The New York Times found it no longer had a seat on Air Force Two. President Barack Obama’s team tried to exclude Fox News from a briefing offered to other networks, only to back down when the rest of the press corps stood up for Fox.2004年，《纽约时报》发表了一篇关于副总统迪克·切尼是否可能退出竞选连任的文章后，我们发现自己在空军二号上没有座位了。奥巴马总统的团队曾试图将福克斯新闻排除在向电视台提供的新闻发布会之外，但当其他媒体站出来支持福克斯时，他们只好让步。But those relatively contained disputes were nothing like what is happening now. The White House takeover of the pool — a rotating group of about 13 correspondents, photographers and technicians given close access to the president so they can report back to their colleagues — upends the way the president has been covered for generations.但那些相对克制的争端与现在发生的情况完全不同。白宫接管了记者团——一个由13名记者、摄影师和技术人员组成的轮换小组，他们可以近距离接触总统，以便向同事汇报——颠覆了几代人以来报道总统的方式。The alarm has been felt by media outlets across the spectrum. Just as the other networks backed Fox against the Obama administration, Fox has backed The Associated Press against the Trump White House and its senior White House correspondent criticized the pool takeover. The precedent being set now, certainly, could be used by a future Democratic administration against media that it disfavored.这引起了各路媒体的警觉。正如其他电视台支持福克斯反抗奥巴马政府一样，福克斯也支持美联社反抗特朗普政府，其白宫高级记者批评了记者团的接管。当然，现在开创的先例可能会被未来的民主党政府用来对付它不喜欢的媒体。On Wednesday, the day after Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, announced the takeover, neither the A.P. nor Reuters, two mainstays of the White House press corps for decades, were included in the pool. Newsmax and The Blaze, two conservative outlets, were invited to take their places.周三，也就是白宫新闻发言人卡罗琳·莱维特宣布接管的第二天，几十年来白宫记者团的两大支柱——美联社和路透社都被排除在记者团名单之外。保守派媒体Newsmax和The Blaze受邀取代它们的位置。The rest of the broadcast networks remained, as did other traditional organizations like Bloomberg and NPR. The pool got a chance to ask Mr. Trump and his billionaire patron Elon Musk questions at the top of a cabinet meeting for about an hour, proof, according to White House aides, that they are not shielding him from scrutiny.其余的电视台得以被保留，彭博社和NPR等其他传统机构也留下来了。在一次内阁会议开始时，这个记者团有机会向特朗普和他的亿万富翁赞助人埃隆·马斯克提问，大约持续了一个小时。白宫助手称，这证明他们并不打算让特朗普免受审视。白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特以民粹主义措辞谈论这次接管。“A select group of D.C.-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege of press access at the White House,” Ms. Leavitt said when she disclosed the takeover, casting it in populist terms. “All journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table. So, by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people.”“白宫的新闻访问特权不再由一小撮驻华盛顿记者所霸占，”莱维特在谈及此次接管时时用上了民粹主义的措辞。“在这张人人趋之若鹜的桌边，所有记者、媒体和声音都应该有一席之地。因此，通过把记者团有限席位的分配变成一个日常性的工作，白宫将把权力交还给美国人民。”The move, of course, “does not give the power back to the people — it gives power to the White House,” as Jacqui Heinrich, the senior White House correspondent at Fox, put it on social media. Ms. Heinrich, who sits on the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which had traditionally decided pool membership, said the group has long welcomed new voices.当然，正如福克斯驻白宫高级记者杰基·海因里希在社交媒体上所说，此举“并不是把权力交还给人民，而是把权力交给了白宫”。海因里希是白宫记者协会的董事会成员，该协会历来是决定记者团成员资格的机构。她说，长期以来，该协会一直欢迎新声音。All of this is taking place against the backdrop of a major shift in foreign policy as Mr. Trump pivots away from Ukraine and toward Mr. Putin’s Russia. In recent days, he has blamed Ukraine for Russia’s full-scale invasion of it in 2022. He also called its popularly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator without elections,” while offering no words of reproach for Russia or Mr. Putin. “He’s a very smart guy,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin on Wednesday. “He’s a very cunning person.”这一切是在外交政策发生重大转变的背景下发生的，特朗普正在从乌克兰转向普京领导的俄罗斯。最近几天，他将俄罗斯在2022年对乌克兰实施全面入侵归咎于乌克兰。他还称该国民选总统·泽连斯基是“未经选举的独裁者”，但没有对俄罗斯或普京提出任何指责。“他是一个非常聪明的人，”特朗普周三谈到普京时说。“他是一个非常狡猾的人。”Yevgenia Albats, a leading Russian journalist who had to flee her country under threat of arrest after the 2022 invasion, said the developments in Washington over the past five weeks resemble the early days of Mr. Putin’s reign.俄罗斯著名记者叶夫根尼娅·阿尔巴茨在2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后，不得不因被捕威胁而逃离自己的国家。她说，过去五周华盛顿的事态发展与普京执政初期的情况非常类似。“The oligarchs kissing the ring, the lawsuits against the media, the constraints on which media should be in the White House pool, and which are not — all that sounds familiar,” Ms. Albats said.“寡头们拍马屁，针对媒体的诉讼，限制哪些媒体可以进入白宫记者团，哪些不应该——所有这些听起来都很熟悉，”阿尔巴茨说。But she stressed that, unlike Russia, the United States remains a nation with important checks and balances, no matter how frayed. “There is one huge difference,” she said. “You have a working and independent judiciary, and we did not. And this is a hell of a difference.”但她强调，与俄罗斯不同的是，美国仍然是一个拥有重要制衡机制的国家，无论它有多么脆弱。“有一个巨大的区别，”她说。“你们有一个独立运作的司法机构，而我们没有。这是一个巨大的不同。”And this comparison to Mr. Putin’s Moscow strikes Mr. Trump’s camp as “hysterical,” as Ms. Leavitt put it online, an overwrought analogy by an entitled left-wing elite upset that its own privileges have been challenged by a president making “much needed change to an outdated organization.”用莱维特在网上的话说，在特朗普阵营的人看来，这种与普京的莫斯科的比较是“歇斯底里”，这是一个有权势的左翼精英的夸张类比，只因为总统“对一个过时的组织进行了非常必要的改变”，他们就感觉自己的特权受到了挑战。Russia was a place in transition when my wife and I first arrived in Moscow in March 2000 to help cover Mr. Putin’s first election and later returned at the end of the year for a four-year stint. The fledgling democracy that President Boris N. Yeltsin had constructed and handed over to Mr. Putin was deeply flawed, corrupt and increasingly discredited in the public’s eyes.2000年3月，我和妻子第一次来到莫斯科，帮助报道普京的首次选举，当时俄罗斯正处于转型期。后来，我们于当年年底回到莫斯科，开始了为期四年的工作。叶利钦总统构建并移交给普京的民主制度刚刚萌生不久，存在严重缺陷、腐败不堪，在公众眼中越来越不可信。Economic tumult had cost millions of Russians their life savings and their sense of security, meaning that many equated the very word “democracy” with chaos and theft. But in those early days as Mr. Putin took over, it was still a relatively open and vibrant political environment, where opinions ranged the gamut and were freely and prolifically expressed.经济动荡使数百万俄罗斯人失去了毕生的积蓄和安全感，这意味着许多人把“民主”这个词等同于混乱和盗窃。但在普京掌权的早期，俄罗斯仍然有一个相对开放、充满活力的政治环境，各种观点都可以自由、广泛地表达。Mr. Putin, arguing that a firm hand was needed to restore order, moved to methodically consolidate power, establishing what his advisers called “managed democracy.” He took over not just the Kremlin press pool but also used lawsuits to seize control of the one major independent television network. He ousted Western-oriented parties from Parliament and eliminated the election of governors so he could appoint them himself.普京认为，恢复秩序需要强硬手段，他开始有条不紊地巩固权力，建立他的顾问所说的“有管理的民主”。他不仅接管了克里姆林宫的记者团，还利用诉讼手段夺取了一家主要独立电视网的控制权。他从议会中驱逐了倾向西方的政党，取消了州长选举，这样他就可以自己任命州长。Perhaps most important, Mr. Putin laid down the law with the once-powerful oligarchs who had become so dominant during the 1990s, promising to let them keep their often ill-gotten fortunes and companies as long as they did not challenge him. Those who disregarded that diktat were arrested or driven out of the country and their businesses taken over. “I control everybody myself,” Mr. Putin said when asked early on what he liked about his new post.也许最重要的是，普京针对那些在上世纪90年代叱咤风云的强大寡头们制定了法律，承诺只要他们不挑战他，就允许他们保留往往来路不正的财富和公司。无视这一命令的人要么被逮捕，要么被驱逐出境，他们的企业也被接管。“我自己控制着所有人，”上任不久的普京被问及喜欢自己新职位的哪些方面时说。2004年的普京。他在上任之初就巩固了权力并对新闻界施加影响。By the time we left in late 2004, Moscow had been transformed. People who had happily talked with us at the start were now afraid to return our calls. “Now I have this fear all the time,” one told us at the time.到2004年底我们离开的时候，莫斯科发生了翻天覆地的变化。一开始和我们愉快交谈的人都已经不敢回复我们的电话。“现在我一直都有恐惧感，”一个人当时这样告诉我们。There is a similar chill now in Washington. Every day someone who used to feel free to speak publicly against Mr. Trump says they will no longer let journalists quote them by name for fear of repercussions, both Democrats and Republicans.现在，华盛顿也有同样的寒意。每天都有一些过去可以随意公开反对特朗普的人表示，因为害怕受到影响，他们不会再让记者引用他们的名字，无论是民主党人还是共和党人。They worry about an F.B.I. headed by an avowed partisan warrior who has already developed what seems to be an enemies list. They fear that their outspokenness may hurt family members who work for the government. They are gambling that if they lie low maybe they will be forgotten.他们担心联邦调查局的领导人是一个公开的党派斗士，他似乎已经列出了一份敌人名单。他们担心自己的直言不讳可能会伤害为政府工作的家人。他们赌的是如果他们保持低调，也许就会被遗忘。After all, this is an administration that stripped security details and clearances from former officials who had angered the president and fired people who were associated with investigations into Mr. Trump or his allies.毕竟，这届政府取消了曾激怒总统的前官员的安保和权限，并解雇了参与调查特朗普或其盟友的人。The chief federal prosecutor for Washington has sent letters to a couple of Democratic members of Congress questioning them about public comments that he considers incitement to violence. At the same time, his office is being purged of lawyers who prosecuted Trump supporters who actually committed violence on Jan. 6, 2021.华盛顿首席联邦检察官致信国会几名民主党议员，询问他们是否发表了在他看来是在煽动暴力的公开言论。与此同时，那些对特朗普支持者——也就是那些在2021年月6日真的实施了暴力的人——发起检控的检察官，却遭到他的办公室的清洗。In Russia, it eventually took a far darker path. Ms. Tregubova went on to write a tell-all book that angered the Kremlin. One day, a bomb exploded outside her apartment; she later fled the country. In the years since, independent journalists have been fired, arrested, poisoned or even killed. So have others deemed to be enemies of the people, most famously the opposition leaders Boris Y. Nemtsov, who was gunned down in the shadow of the Kremlin, and Aleksei A. Navalny, who died in prison.在俄罗斯，事态最终走上了更加黑暗的道路。特列古波娃后来写了一本揭露真相的书，激怒了克里姆林宫。一天，一枚炸弹在她的公寓外爆炸；后来她逃离了这个国家。此后数年，独立记者被解雇、逮捕、下毒甚至被杀害。其他被视为人民公敌的人也是如此，其中最著名的是反对派领导人鲍里斯·涅姆佐夫和阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼，涅姆佐夫在克里姆林宫的阴影下被枪杀，纳瓦尔尼死于狱中。Again, America is no Russia. The history there is so fraught and complicated. Certainly, many Russian journalists would still rather live in Washington these days than Moscow, confident that America’s tradition of free press and democratic ideals remains far stronger than what exists back home.再次重申，美国不是俄罗斯。那里的历史令人忧虑，极度复杂。当然，许多俄罗斯记者如今仍宁愿住在华盛顿，也不愿住在莫斯科，他们相信，美国的新闻自由传统和民主理想远比俄罗斯强大。But in decades of reporting in Washington, under Republicans and Democrats, it has never felt quite like this.但是，无论是在共和党人和民主党人的领导下，我在华盛顿从事记者工作几十年，从未有过如今的这种感觉。Peter Baker是《纽约时报》首席白宫记者。他报道了最近的五位美国总统的新闻，有时也撰写将总统和美国政府置于更宏观的背景和历史框架下的分析性文章。点击查看更多关于他的信息。翻译：晋其角