By Thalif Deen*
UNITED NATIONS | 24 July 2024 (IDN) — Tarzie Vittachi, a renowned Sri Lankan newspaper editor and one-time deputy executive director of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, once recounted the story of an African diplomat who sought his help to get coverage in the US media for his prime minister’s address to the General Assembly.
The diplomat, a friend of Vittachi’s, said the visiting African leader was planning to tell the world body about his country’s success stories battling poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS.
“How can I get this story into the front pages of US newspapers?” he asked.
Vittachi, then a columnist and contributing editor to Newsweek magazine, perhaps half-jokingly, retorted: “Shoot him—and you will get the front page of every newspaper in the US”
Mercifully, he wanted the visiting leader shot, not killed.
The advice was based on a basic principle in tabloid journalism: “If it bleeds, it leads”, which originated with William Randolph Hearst Jr, a powerful American newspaper publisher who presided over the nation’s largest newspaper chain in the 1950s and 60s.
Perhaps the most famous anecdote, surrounding Hearst’s zeal for the Cuban-Spaniard war, involved a legendary communication after he dispatched one of his photographers to cover the insurrection.
After a couple of weeks, the staffer cabled Hearst that there was no war to cover. And Hearst famously responded: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
Meanwhile, the early morning discovery of a decapitated body in a strip club in New York city was a sensational front-page story in the New York Post back in April 1983. The notorious headline, HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR, reflected a mix of violence and sex, the staple of tabloid journalism.
FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD
When a mental patient escaped after being accused of raping a nurse, the headline read: “NUT, SCREWS, AND BOLTS.” Perhaps more appropriate for a sign outside a hardware store.
And when former US President Gerald Ford, rejected a plea for a federal bailout to a near-bankrupt New York City back in 1975, the New York Daily News ran the story as a page one lead under the now-famous banner headline: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.
In some of the world’s newspaper offices, journalists are known to be born—or gifted—with a sense of humour, including editors, headline writers, cartoonists and sports editors.
In the 1950s, most newspapers had a STOP PRESS column on the front page for fast breaking stories and late-night obituaries. An over-enthusiastic cub reporter in a US newspaper arrived at the office after one of his morning assignments and shouted: “I have a scoop. Stop the Press. Stop the Press”. And the news editor shouted back: “You jerk, we haven’t even started the press”.
Walter Winchell, one of the best-known syndicated columnists of his generation, authored a widely-read gossip column, home to some of the best anecdotes picked at cocktail parties, night clubs and restaurants. Before he died in1972, Winchell picked his own epitaph: Here lies Walter Winchell with his ear to the ground—as usual.
Even movie critics could be devastating in their reviews. One critic, who panned a movie, ended his piece with a final blow: The movie, he said, was shot in Mexico. It should have been buried there.
When a movie critic was reviewing a film starring a Hollywood star with a strange name—RIP TORN, an Academy Award nominee—he jokingly said: “I presume his son is named ZIP FASTENER?”
The phrase “a bull in a China shop” usually refers to a person who often makes mistakes or causes damage in situations that require careful thinking or behavior.
CHINA IN A BULL SHOP
When Taiwan was ousted from the United Nations back in September 1971 and replaced with the People’s Republic of China, the cartoon in a London newspaper flipped the old cliché: CHINA IN A BULL SHOP. Perhaps it sounded realistic, judging from the rhetoric from some UN delegates best described as a “lot of B-S”.
When 22-year-old Cassius Clay, a relatively unknown boxer, fought then-reigning world heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in February 1964, we on the Observer staff in Sri Lanka had the rare privilege of watching a blow-by-blow account of the fight, on an international wire service, at our news desk, in the absence of TV. Our sports editor was so confident of a Liston victory, he had a headline ready to go: LISTON MAKES A MUG OUT OF CLAY.
But fortunately, the headline never went into print because Clay won the heavyweight title beating Liston on the seventh round in a technical knockout (TKO). And not surprisingly, Clay became a boxing legend—and changed his name to Muhammad Ali after converting to Islam.
Known for his sharp witticisms (“float like butterfly and sting like a bee”), he was described as the “Greatest of all Time” (GOAT) and a “superman”.
When he was on a flight, the air hostess walked around requesting passengers to wear their seat belts as the flight was about to take off. The air hostess told Ali: “Champ, you have to wear your seat belt”. And he jokingly shot back: “Superman need no safety belt to fly”. But the air hostess had the last word: “Champ”, she said, “Superman also need no plane to fly”.
Journalists also have a tendency to mix their metaphors—going back to Shakespeare: Taking arms against a sea of troubles. (Hamlet Act III Scene I). So, it was not surprising when a newspaper jokingly announced the death of a departed mother as: THE HAND THAT ROCKED THE CRADLE KICKED THE BUCKET.
Journalists spend more time with their mouse than their spouse.
Journalists also have a notoriety of working round the clock—never to miss a breaking or a fast-developing story while pounding on their desktops and laptops late into the nights, prompting an editor to wisecrack: Journalists spend more time with their mouse than their spouse.
When a predominantly Muslim Southeast Asian country was alarmed at the rising population in the 1960s, the government decided on an experiment: flood parts of the country—selected cities and towns—with thousands of condoms.
But one year later, the government was surprised to find the population had risen, not declined. And according to a newspaper report, the government discovered that the people were such dedicated Muslims they circumcised the condom—cutting the tip off—every time they wore one.
Or so the story goes.
The raunchy Playboy magazine, known for its topless nudes, had a wide readership, including a God-fearing US president who famously said: “I read the articles, but I don’t look at the photos” The magazine’s lengthy interviews—some running over 10 pages—were mostly verbatim Q and As, with little or no editing.
Hollywood icon Marlon Brando, who openly criticized successive US administrations for the neglect and mistreatment of American Indians, the original inhabitants of the US, was also a strong advocate of the poor and the downtrodden.
Everything in this world is so heavily stacked against the poor, he said in a Playboy interview in 1979, quoting a proverb, “If shit comes of value, the poor will be born without assholes”
*This article contains excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That” – authored by Thalif Deen, Editor-at Large, In-Depth News (IDN), Berlin. A Fulbright scholar with a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, he twice (2012 and 2013) shared the gold medal for excellence in UN reporting awarded by the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA). The book is available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/ [IDN-InDepthNews]
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