The Cable 'Rigger'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4, 25 January 1906, Page 1

The Cable ' Rigger '

When we read some of the stuff that appears as cable-news in some of the dally papers, we comfort ourselves with Artemus Ward's remark : • There is one good thing about all such yarns— you needn't believe them unless you want to.' It is bad enough to have cable news ' rigged ' at one end of the electric wire. But what chance has truth of running the journalistic blockade when there is a ' rigger ' lying in wait for her at the other end also ? The Sydney ' Freeman ' gives the following illuminating sample of how a message, recently sent by the same service at the same hour and in the same terms, appeared on the same day in two Sydney newspapers :—: — ' Sir Charles Dilke's address ' Sir Charles Dilke's address to the electors of the Forest contained but a single sentence of Dean (Gloucestershire), with regard to Home Rule, to which he has represented since the effect that the party solicit 1892, consists of a single sen- with confidence a renewal of tence :" I solicit with confi- trust.' — ' Australian Star.' dence a renewal of your trust." ' — ' Evening News.'

Some time ago we, compared the versions of cable message that had been sent in identical terms to the daily papers in the four chief centres of population in New Zealand. The results were still more surprising than those quoted by our Sydney contemporary. The comparison set us wondering, and leaves us still wondering, whether the cable man was born that way, 01 became so by the cultivated habit of tricking out news with the gewgaws of his own fancy. ' When little boys tell tiny fibs, We turn all roary-tory, And tells how lions ate the child, Who told one naughty story.' But no deterrent— not even that of periodical exposure - seems to ruffle the calm serenity with which the cable man pursues the even tenor of his great and tiny fibbing. It seems as hard to mend his ways as to teach a ciab to walk stralight.