Their Own Self
FRED Columns
Their Own Self
FRED Columns
A Free Press Over-Priced?
Sources Say First Amendment Just For Practice, Bill Of Rights Starts With Second.
The fault really lay with Ian Braxley, a computer major from NYU who interned that summer with the data-processing department of the New York Times. By the time anyone figured it out, American military policy had been changed forever. Braxley had an IQ of 193, a sense of humor, and access to the operating system. The combination proved fateful. One night he inserted in the print queue an imaginary Reuters story about problems in the Army's new tank, the M-28 Kaboom, which didn't exist. It ran in the back pages. Nobody at the paper noticed. Braxley and his girlfriend had a giggle and forgot about it. The Washington Post noticed, however. The Post had just hired a new defense reporter, Dieter Frieding-Finzi, a German-Italian Swiss. His credentials as a military writer were impeccable. His grandmother had marched with the Spartacists. His grandfather was an African-American from a labor battalion in WWI. He was the embodiment of diversity, and he ate quiche. He called the Pentagon, which he had learned was in nearby Virginia. What were the flaws in the tank, he demanded, and was it true that they were irremediable? Why was the Army hiding them? Major William Grunderling, the Public Affairs Officer on the Army desk, was baffled. He was used to stupid reporters, had in fact regarded it as a job qualification. This took witlessness to a new plane of existence. The Kaboom didn't exist, he explained. It was hard to say whether the flaws in a nonexistent tank were irremediable. "Well," demanded Frieding-Finzi, "Can you think of a way to fix them?" "No," responded Grunderling logically. "Army Denies Flaws Fatal," ran the headline on page three, the subhead being "Pentagon Waffles." The story might have stopped there. But things were slow in the news racket. Television, which gets its stories from the Post and the Times, fell on the tank like a sock full of chicken tenders. A reporter for CBS called an exasperated Major Grunderling who said, "Look, we don't have an M-28 Kaboom. There isn't one. Zero. We are a Kaboomless Army." That night, anchorwoman Babbette Willowly reported the story. She was well qualified to cover tanks, having long silky lashes and an adorable stutter. "Is the Army secretly developing a questionable new supertank without informing Congress? Sources question the legality of this black program…." The story went national. Liberal senators trampled each other to reach the nearest microphone. "Clearly this in an unconstitutional program since we haven't been informed of it," they intoned. "The military is out of control." Conservatives responded that the program was vital to national security, and said that liberals were soft on communism. Someone objected that there wasn't any communism except in North Korea and the Harvard faculty lounge. "That just shows the unrealism of Democratic policy, being soft on it when they haven't got any," responded Republicans. Liberals said they were merely being foresighted. Communism might come back. Across the country, editors of little papers read the Times, which is where they get their news, and wrote blistering editorials about the unconscionable waste of money on a flawed tank. Thereafter when any reporter did an Internet search on the Kaboom, he found hundreds of corroborative stories. The weight of evidence overcame doubt: Even papers in Peoria knew that the tank was a dog. The New York Times was stunned. The paper vaguely felt that it had broken the story, though it wasn't sure how. Yet other outlets were beating it. Try as it might, the paper couldn't get any firm information on the tank. The Army, always right-wing, continued to stonewall: There was no such tank. Finally a break came. Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the paper, was in his local bar in the Village. He had gotten his favorite seat, convenient to the men's room yet allowing a view of babes who came in. New York being New York, he found himself next to a delusional para-schiz with a snootful. "It's a radioactive death tank from the CIA," said the schizophrenic, twitching slightly. "It squirts anthrax and smallpox. The receivers in my fillings told me." Kristof wrote, "A well-placed source with connections to the CIA says the Kaboom shoots germs. Is it possible that the Army was responsible for the Black Plague?"
Someone pointed out that the Black Death occurred in 1348. In a follow-up
column, Kristof said this showed the inefficiency of the Army's development
programs. It made no sense. No one noticed.
The House Armed Services Committee began an investigation on the lagging progress of the tank. Many of the members knew the Kaboom didn't exist, but it was an election year and they wanted to look busy. Then feminists complained that the M-28 had been designed without consideration for the needs of women. This put the Army on the spot. Since the Kaboom hadn't been designed at all, it hadn't been designed for women. The Pentagon was stung by the resulting headlines. ("Army Admits Neglecting Half of Human Race.") Panic ensued among the Joint Chiefs. Funds were diverted from the enlisted housing budget to develop the M-29 Mobile Battlefield Familial Unit. It was a modified armored personnel carrier with porta-potties, makeup mirror, a playpen for dependent children and, in case these wanted to see their fathers, a DNA-testing unit. A free press eventually finds the truth. The tank began to acquire focus.
In journalism, a fact is defined as idle speculation that has appeared
in three major newspapers. Facts proliferated as reporters worked their
sources. The Kaboom had rocket engines and rotors, weighed 700 tons,
and carried nuclear weapons. Yet questions remained. Did the mystery
tank have a rifled main gun, or a trendy smoothbore?
Dan Rather became the authority on the Kaboom. He knew nothing of
rifled guns, or arguably of anything else, but was familiar with smooth
bores, having been to cocktail parties in Georgetown. He concluded that
the tank fired poisoned darts.
Things were getting out of hand. The Army's damage-control apparatus swung into action. In a tense meeting on the Pentagon's E-ring the service decided that it had to build the tank. It didn't want a new tank. Especially it didn't want a 700-ton radioactive tank that squirted germs and had rotors. Yet if the service didn't produce the damned thing, they decided, the press would never stop. Besides, the Mobile Battlefield Familial Unit was coming along. It couldn't go into battle without a matching tank. Then a small story appeared in the back pages of the New York Times, mentioning problems with the secret Air Force base on Mars. Nobody noticed. Except Dieter Frieding-Finzi….
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