Vol. 7, Issue 4, October 27, 2009
The Importance of Hitting the Right Button
This reporter was relieved to find this morning that the Republican National Committee had prepared the copy for his article on healthcare legislation, and that several ominous-sounding quotes from experts with impressive sounding names provided independent support for the RNC position that healthcare reform will result in every American being personally punched in the stomach by a socialist. With a little tap of a button on my iPhone, I plan to file the story, be done with work and get to the hotel bar by 11:30.
...Further examination revealed that I didn't hit the 'copy' and 'paste' buttons correctly, and that instead of the smoothly professional article I intended to post, my readers have been treated to an off-the-record discussion of the RNC article instead, which is not what I intended. To distract readers and avoid getting in trouble, I will now publish a very scary and entirely unsourced statistic such as the fact that 80% OF ALL DOCTORS WILL QUIT AND BECOME SHEEP FARMERS if the Democratic plan is put into effect. (The use of all caps, as everyone knows, is a traditional and venerated way of underscoring one's truthiness and will draw the readers' eyes away from the potentially embarrassing first paragraph.)
...I am now told that reporters were not supposed to mention the fact that the RNC provided the text for the article at all, which I still haven't succeeded in posting to the newswire yet. In order to make up for this technical lapse, it's being suggested that I file two additional stories of the RNC's choosing at an undetermined point in the near future.
...It turns out that I wasn't supposed to mention that part either, so now this reporter is hiding under a chair in the back of the pressroom, desperately tapping away on his iPhone and posting patriotic information such as the fact that flying the American flag has been proven to prevent swine flu in your house, and that true Americans live 50% longer than those living in America illicitly!
...That tidbit about the flags and the swine flu has apparently caught the eye of Glenn Beck, who's now attributing it to a secretly suppressed report by the Center for Disease Control. I seem to be out of the doghouse thanks to my 'find' and am now being welcomed out from under the chair with red, white, and blue donuts and some true-blue American coffee.
It's good to be an American reporter in 2009. I guess.
