Evelyn is a man

We are in the midst of Philadelphia's biggest snowstorm. I have never seen anything like it. Total accumulation could be 38 inches. Larchwood Avenue looks like a ski resort; vague figures wield snow shovels in swirling snow, cars crawl by hauling high-hats of snow on their roofs, and off-lead dogs bound through drifts. It could be horribly dangerous if we actually had to go anywhere, but we are home, in the warm and have netflix for entertainment - though the milk levels are getting low.

I finished book two of "Scoop" and seem to have lost interest. I am, therefore, a little confused about the action. Book two deals with William's adventures in Ishmealia. In a nutshell, journalists are sent there because of potential civil conflict. A story of a Russian incursion is broken by one of the newspaper men, but disproved by some wrangling by other newspaper men. All the jouranlists are tricked into going to a imaginary town called "laku" or "I don't know" except for the hero William. Mr. Benito, a revolutionary front man, attempts to get William out of the city, but William is too interested in staying and wooing a gold-digging, married Polish girl. Mr. Benito and his Russian compadres overthrow the Jackson government and William is the only press to witness the events. In the meantime, the husband of the Polish girl returns and the couple leave in William's canoe. Left in the capital, William reconnects with a rich Brit, Mr. Baldwin, who turns out to own the mineral interests of the country. A swede on a motorbike crashes into a bar, discovers, via William and Mr. Baldwin, that a revolution has taken place, storms the palace and kills Benito and his gang. Again, William is the only one to report the events, except he is so inept Mr. Baldwin writes the piece for him. Remember, Mr. Baldwin seems to own the country.

It seems ridiculous, but is "Scoop" really that far from reality. Journalists are given the responsibility to report the facts about the story they are covering. Clueless William is the only voice covering a story of world importance and he is being manipulated by every side. How can we trust the news that we read? Is it possible to report facts without some opinion or bias seeping in? It's entirely possible for all newspaper stories to be complete fabrications, but we believe it because it is all we have. Scoop was written in the 1930s. Now technology has advanced to the point that the truth should be easier to attain; we have live blogging, twitter, video, cell phones that let the public see, hear and read about events practically in real time. Does this remove the bias? Or does this just clog up the news? Instead of having just one voice (however unreliable), the public now has hundreds of different voices to listen to.