A trap catches a news thief

Friday, 13 November 2009 00:00

November 13, 1894. The Toronto Mail describes how the Associated Press news service catches its rival United Press in a trap.

AP news items, presumably re-written, had been turning up in newspapers served by UP as original UP news. So AP laid a trap by a slight doctoring of a cablegram from Calcutta to read: "The natives of the tributary State of Nyaghun, in the Province of Orissa, have revolted against their ruler, Siht el Otspueht." The revolt might have been real enough, but the name of the Rajah was not.

The AP report with the faked name of the Rajah went out to all the newspapers it serves throughout the United States and Canada.

"Not only did the unfortunate Rajah figure in the Associated Press newspaper on Saturday morning, but, strange to say, he appeared in all of his shameless mendacity in the United Press paper as well," says the Mail's account.

"The United Press had appropriated its rival's ‘news.' And that treacherous Rajah, not content with his mission to point a moral and adorn a tale, had audaciously placed together the letters of his mystic name in such a way that, reading backward, they recite fact a indisputable: The U.P. stole this.'"