Rumour Mongering

Experienced reporters know they can get way with writing anything so long as they bury it deep in their story. Lazy editors only scan the beginning of a report and proof-readers are only looking for grammatical errors. Ansar Abbasi of The News is a master at getting in unfounded rumours and frankly libelous statements into his stories. So he starts his report with the supposedly newsworthy peg that Tariq Aziz is sticking by Musharraf. He then launches into a rambling history of Aziz’s relationship with the president. All this is done for the sole purpose of sticking in this nugget at the end of his story:

“He is interested in horse races too but last year's mess has considerably diverted his attention from this too. Interestingly, he considers betting on horse races Islamic.”