Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their
reader with unimportant facts and statistics. Last year a journalist had been
instructed by a well-known magazine to write an article on the president's
palace in a new African republic. When the article arrived, the editor read
the first sentence and then refuse to publish it. The article began: 'Hundreds
of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace'. The
editor at once sent the journalist a fax instructing him to find out the exact
number of steps and the height of the wall.#
The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, but the
took a long time to send them. Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient,
for the magazine would soon go to press. He sent the journalist two more
faxes, but received no reply. He sent yet another fax informing the journalist
that if he did not reply soon he would be fired. When the journalist again
failed to reply, the editor reluctantly published the article as it had
originally been written. A week later, the editor at last received a fax from
the journalist. Not only had the poor man been arrested, but he had been sent
to prison as well. However, he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which
he informed the editor that the he had been arrested while counting the 1,084
steps leading to the fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.&