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--- lesson 5 The facts |
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--- Listen to the tape then answer the question below. |
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--- What was the consequence of the editor's insistence on facts and statistics? |
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Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statistics. |
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Last year a journalist had been instructed by a well-known magazine to write an article on the president's palace in a new African republic. |
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When the article arrived, the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it. |
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The article began: 'Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace'. |
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The editor at once sent the journalist a fax instructing him to find out the exact number of steps and the height of the wall. |
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The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, |
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but he took a long time to send them. Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press. |
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He sent the journalist two more faxes, but received no reply. |
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He sent yet another fax informing the journalist that if he did not reply soon he would be fired. |
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When the journalist again failed to reply, the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written. |
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A week later, the editor at last received a fax from the journalist. |
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Not only had the poor man been arrested, but he had been sent to prison as well. |
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However, he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he informed the editor |
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that he had been arrested while counting the 1,084 steps leading to the fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace. |