News Satire in History
Richard A. Locke successfully increased sales of The Sun newspaper in 1835 by publishing a series of six articles, now known as the Great Moon Hoax, under the name of a contemporary astronomer.
Author Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was employed as a newspaper reporter before becoming famous as a novelist and in this position he published many hoax articles. He left two separate journalism positions, Nevada (1864) fleeing a challenge to duel and San Francisco fleeing outraged police officials, because his satire and fiction were often taken for the truthful accounts they were presented as. Of this experience he said, "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." Ironically, the accuracy of many newspaper and autobiographical accounts used to follow the early life of Samuel Clemens are in doubt.
Newspapers still print occasional news satire features, in particular on April Fools' Day. This news is specifically identified somewhere in the paper or in the next day as a joke.
In 1934, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a series of ten one-reel theatrical shorts called Goofy Movies, which included "Wotaphony Newsreel," a newsreel parody that paired actual footage with a mocking, deadpan narration.
Also in 1934, halfway through a Kraft Music Hall radio show, Dean Taylor ("Others collect the news, Dean makes it!") narrated a fake newsreel which began with a report on the New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies being cancelled due to bad weather, and baseball season being rescheduled to when farmers need rain.
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Famous quotes containing the words news, satire and/or history:
“It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)