Re: MESSAGE ID: 1EC610858

["'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

> I wonder if anyone on this newsgroup recalls any other major wire-service
>  gaffe or any TV news majuor gaffe (apart from April's Fools things like
>  Channel 7's 1980 "April Fool's" report of Blue Hill erupting as a volcano)

In April 1964, there were false reports of the death of Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev.  What apparently happened, as best I can recall, was
that Tass was sending the text of a speech by Khrushchev and suddenly
stopped sending in mid-speech.  Someone called Tass to ask what was wrong,
and the Tass operator replied, "It is dead," meaning the line was dead.
But since he was speaking Russian, his words could also have been
understood as "He is dead," and were.

I was doing the afternoon news at WMUA at UMass when this thing came over
the teletype.  When I went into the studio to do my newscast, I had only
the reports of unconfirmed rumors.  So I asked someone to watch the
teletype, just in case something more came over while I was on the air.

That evening, on the TV news, it was reported that the Kremlin had denied
the story and blamed the whole thing on a capitalist plot.

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 A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                         617.367.0468
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