Fun with Frederick Forsyth 1: Journalists

The last few posts have been intense. Time to lighten the tone.

* * * * *

These were the days when readers had no objection to a foreign correspondent having a pretty vivid imagination and it was not unknown for a journalist far from home, unable to garner the true facts of a story, simply to make it up. There is a glorious example of the American from Hearst Newspapers who arrived by train somewhere in the Balkans to cover a civil war. Unfortunately he overslept on the train and woke up in the next capital down the line, which happened to be rather quiet. Rather perplexed, he recalled he had been sent to cover a civil war so he had better do it. He duly filed a vigorous war report. The next morning this was read by the [Balkan] embassy in Washington who sent the report back to their masters at home [...] The local government mobilized the militia. The peasants, fearing a pogrom, revolted. A civil war subsequently began. The journalist woke up to a telegram from New York congratulating him on a world scoop.

[Frederick Forsyth, The Phantom of Manhattan, page 17.]