[00:08.23]
What was the consequence of the editor's insistence on facts and statistics?[00:16.30]
Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statistics.[00:24.65]
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.[00:34.66]
When the article arrived,[00:36.67]
the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it.[00:42.00]
The article began:'Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace.'[00:49.81]
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.[01:00.85]
The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts,[01:05.54]
but he took a long time to send them.[01:08.31]
Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient,[01:11.10]
for the magazine would soon go to press.[01:13.80]
He sent the journalist two more faxes,[01:16.84]
but received no reply.[01:19.03]
He sent yet another fax informing the journalist that if he did not reply soon he would be fired.[01:26.43]
When the journalist again failed to reply,[01:29.42]
the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written.[01:35.22]
A week later, the editor at last received a fax from the journalist.[01:40.55]
Not only had the poor man been arrested,[01:43.66]
but he had been sent to prison as well.[01:46.76]
However, he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he informed the editor that he had been arrested[01:55.63]
while counting the 1, 084 steps leading to the 15th foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.