The Facts

Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statices.

Last year a journalist had been constructed by a well-known magazine to  write an article on the president’s palace in a new republic African

When the article arrived, the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it.

The article began: “Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president’s palace”.

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.

The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, but he tool a long

time to send them.

Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press.

He sent yet another fax informing the journalist that if he did not reply soon he would be fired.

When the journalist again failed to reply, the reluctantly published the article as it had

originally been written.

A week later, the editor at last received a fax from the journalist.

Not only had the poor man been arrested, but he had been sent to prison as well.

However, he had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he informed the editor

that he had been arrested which counting the 1,084 steps leading to the fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president’s palace.