ABSTRACT
The author talks about the sensational Koblenz trial of Herr Born one melancholy journalist express the conviction that what Television is doing is Destroying Reality, for one no longer see what exists or what is, what takes place or happens. Accordingly the Born affair–with a knowing side-glance at Konrad Kujau and Janet Cooke and so many others–is being elevated to the general thesis that the borderline between fiction and reality disappears the moment somebody picks up a camera. There is a special tragicomic aspect to the Janet Cooke story, which adds to the central hoax of its being a believable forgery. It touches on some other themes in the account of the newspaper culture: the ironic twists of an unusual black usage of the n-word; the excessive ethnic over-load of making a "culture" of a skin color; and the problem of writing good prose when big-town journalists are caught between the pressures of jive and profanity.
