There’s the power of the press for you.

Consider, for instance, this episode fromScoop, Evelyn Waugh’s classic satire on the occasionalwaywardness of journalism’s most celebrated and romanticizedcorps d’elite, the foreign correspondents.

The reporter concerned, a tweedy pipe smoker named James Gibbins, waslater found to have concocted a myriad similarly implausible stories. Amongthem: A survey conducted at New York’s Algonquin Hotel showing thatwatching half an hour of As the World Turns had the same narcoleptic effect asdowning three vodka-and-tonics. A bar in Laurel, Maryland, that kept a petmonkey, with free drinks given to the first customer on whom the creature sat.Pigeons in Cornwall seen sporting human heads. Mr. Gibbins was exposed as“The Faker of Fleet Street” in an article in the Washington Post, and he wasrelieved of his job as a Mail foreign correspondent.