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The public opinion of the media does not run high in the early years of 2000, yet a severe attack on journalists for distorting or fabricating the news in 1937, before the most misreported series of events of the century, WWII and it s causes. It was written by a member disreputable profession, who with this book, and 6 others established themselves as perhaps the most satiric novelist in the history of English literature. In Scoop, Waugh tells the story of an inexperienced nature columnist named John Boot who is mistaken for another journalist with the same name and sent by the Beast, a large London newspaper, to cover growing unrest in the East African nation Ishmaelia. Boot is surprised to learn the timeliness and originality are more highly prized by his colleagues and their editors than are truth and fairness.
Before Boot leaves Beast publisher Lord Copper explains what s expected of him. The British public has no interest in a war which drags on extensively. A few sharp victories, some conspicuous acts of personal bravery on the patriot side. That is the Beast policy for war.
we shall expect the first victory about the middle of July. (Waugh) Upon his arrival in Jacksonburg, the capitol of Ishmaelia, Boot encounters a small group of reporters from rival newspapers, but no trace of unrest. A major writer from a wire service explains the media presence by recounting his editor s reaction to the so-called crisis in Ishmaelia. Boot soon discovers that the reporters spend less time trying to develop legitimate leads than they do in studying their more aggressive or inventive colleagues for signs that the latter are onto something. They pay native servants to intercept each others communications to and from their editorial offices back home in a effort to stay abreast of the latest slants, by way of illustrating the lengths to which his peers might go to corner the exclusive scoop. A veteran newsman named Corker relates to the bewildered Boot the realistic story of the maverick Wedlock Jakes, the highest paid journalist in America.
That day every special reporter in Europe got orders to rush to the new revolution. They arrived in shoals. Everything seemed quit enough, but it was as much as their jobs were worth to say so, with Jakes filling a thousand words of blood and thunder a day. Government stocks dropped, famine, mutiny and in less than a week there was an honest to god revolution underway, just as Jakes had said.
There s the power of the press for you. A similar process playing itself out in Ishmaelia accelerates when an enterprising reporter scoops the others by alleging that a newly arrived railroad employee is actually a soviet agent. When Boot discovers that there is no truth to the allegation, Corker points out that exposing the fraud would be considered unprofessional and that the papers prefer not to print denials even of their rival s most blatant excesses. Shakes public confidence in the press he explains. Besides it looks as if we weren t doing our job properly.
It would be to easy if every time a chap got a scoop and the rest of the bunch denied it. When Boot later confirms the existence of a real soviet agent in Jacksonburg, Corker surprises him that the story, true or not, no longer has ant news value. Left alone in the capitol when his sheep like colleagues rush off en masse to search the country side for a chimeric rebel stronghold, Boot inadvertently uncovers the real story of Russian, German, and British interests vying through there various native proxies for control of Ishmaelia s vast mineral reserve. In addition to ensuring the success of the British-backed faction, his dispatches earn him instant celebrity in England, to which he returns thoroughly disillusioned with news reporting and determined to resume his nature column.
Since the publication of Scoop life has so often imitated art that was once preposterous event of news creating an event has become way to common. Evelyn Waugh may prove to have been our last great satirist and there will be no room for exaggeration when our modern customs and institutions have become parodies of their originals.
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Research essay sample on Soviet Agent Boot Ishmaelia
