[al:新概念英语（三）] [ar:MP3 同步字幕版（英音）] [ti:The Facts] [by:更多学习内容，请到chazidian.com搜索“新概念”] [00:01.46]Lesson 5 [00:03.39]The facts [00:10.90]What was the consequence of the editor's insistence on facts and statistics? [00:18.58]Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes [00:22.95]to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statistics. [00:27.82]Last year a journalist had been instructed by a well-known magazine [00:33.08]to write an article on the president's palace in a new African republic. [00:38.72]When the article arrived, [00:40.57]the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it. [00:45.87]The article began: [00:48.02]Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace.' [00:53.92]The editor at once sent the journalist a fax [00:57.71]instructing him to find out the exact number of steps and the height of the wall [01:04.45]The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, [01:09.27]but he took a long time to send them. [01:11.89]Meanwhile,the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press. [01:18.79]He sent the journalist two more faxes,but received no reply. [01:24.55]He sent yet another fax informing the journalist [01:27.89]that if he did not reply soon he would be fired. [01:32.41]When the journalist again failed to reply, [01:36.09]the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written. [01:42.34]A week later,the editor at last received a fax from the journalist. [01:47.92]Not only had the poor man been arrested, but he had been sent to prison as well. [01:53.68]However,he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he informed the editor [01:59.43]that he had been arrested while counting the 1,084 steps [02:04.95]leading to the 15 foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.