WALL TO FALL STORY SNOWBALLS

by Pam North

Beyond just reporting the news, the media has sometimes actually resorted
to creating it.  In 1899, when four Denver, Colorado reporters couldn't
find anything to write about, they decided to invent a story, and the resulting
newpaper hoax shook the world.

It was a quiet Saturday night, and reporters from the Denver Post, Rocky
Mountain News, Times and Republican chanced to encounter each other at
the railroad station.  Commiserating with each other about the lack
of news that evening, they began to consider the idea of concocting some
kind of a believable but fictitious story to turn in.  After many
ideas were evaluated and discarded for various reasons (and a few beers
were downed during their conversation), they came up with the concept that
a group of American engineers had stopped off in Denver on their way to
China, to which they had been summoned by the ruling powers there to develop
a plan to demolish the Great Wall.  The ancient boundary was to be
eliminated as a gesture of international good will, and to show that the
Chinese had decided to welcome and participate in world trade.  In order to 
substantiate this farce, the reporters went to one of Denver's best hotels, 
and talked the night clerk into cooperating.  Four fictitious names were 
signed on the guest register, and the clerk was instructed to answer any 
inquiries with the story that four New Yorkers had spent the night there, 
and had been interviewed by the Denver reporters.  A pact of secrecy was 
agreed upon by all of the participants.

The next day all four newspapers, unaware of the fabrication, featured
the story, with headlines proclaiming that the Great Wall was doomed and
Peking was inviting world trade.  After a week or two, it appeared that 
the story had run its course locally, and was on its way to being
forgotten.  Momentum had just begun, however, and a few days later the 
Great Wall's impending destruction was the featured subject in a large
eastern newspaper, with additional details embroidered into the story to
supposedly substantiate and enhance it.  Soon the topic had traveled
to other major American newspapers, and then to Europe.  Inevitably,
it reached China, and upon its arrival there, the story had undergone a
major transformation.  The Chinese government read it as news of an
American expedition en route to tear down their national monument.  This 
caused violent repercussions in a land already upset by the issue of 
foreign intervention.  Several European powers had been involved in various 
unwelcome activities within China in recent times, and China, afraid of 
further exploitation, possible partition and further influx of Western ideas 
and culture, had begun to retaliate.  Radical internal reforms were being
instituted, their armies were in the process of modernization, and vital 
technical training was being obtained.  A secret society known as the Boxers 
had been engaging in open opposition, carrying banners that displayed 
aggressive themes vowing to exterminate foreigners and to uphold the dynasty.

The perceived threat of demolition of their Great Wall sparked this
volatile situation into the Boxer Rebellion.  Bands of Boxers overran
the entire country in June 1900, laying siege to foreign embassies and
Christian villages.  Massacres of native converts occurred in large
numbers, and murder and pillage were daily occurrences.  In August, a 
combined international force of American, British, French, German, Japanese
and Russian troops, numbering 12,000, invaded China.  This army brought
its own brand of looting and slaughter in its march to Peking, and it also
forced China to make further economic concessions, including the payment
of a $320 million indemnity.  More internal reform followed on theheels of 
all this turmoil, eventially culminating in the Sun Yat-Set revolution
in 1911.

While the violence of the Boxer Rebellion might have occurred historically
on its own without the influence of this journalistic hoax, there is no doubt 
that the fabricated story was the catalyst that set off the explosion, and 
it could be successfully argued that the imagination of four story-hungry 
Denver reporters changed the course of Chinese history.  The power of the 
press is a mighty force; it is one that should be used wisely.


nformation Source:  Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader