HEARST NEATLY TRAPPED.

Taihape Daily Times, 26 April 1918, Page 3

HEARST NEATLY TRAPPED.

New York. The American reading public is enjoying a hearty laugh to-day, says the Exchange Telegraph Company, at the expense of Mr. Hearst’s International News Service, which has again been caught “with the goods.” Ever since this organisation was barred by the British Government from operating in England as a result of “faking” cables from London, it has been greatly handicapped in obtaining European news. Nevertheless, it continued to publish despatches under London date lines. For some time the other American agencies have suspected a leak in their own wires. Yesterday the United Press of Am-

erica set a trap for Mr. Hearst, It sent out on one of its wires an authentic despatch from its Petrograd correspondent, with the inserted statement that the news therein had been secured from “Under-Secretary Nelotsky.” Failing to penetrate the camouflage of the name of this individual, which spelled backwards, after eliminating “ky,” gives “stolen,” the Hearst international News Service appropriated the despatch and re-wrote it under a London date, distributing it broadcast through the country. Its clients in New York, Boston, Chicago, and other cities printed it, and thus American newspaper annals have duly recorded the existence or this distinguished “Russian official,” as well as holding the International News Service up to nation-wide ridicule.