Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 56, Number 185, Decatur, Adams County, 7 August 1958 — Page 9

THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1958

Cosf Os Covering War Is Expensive Business

fcMTORS NOTE: This dispatch was requested by a United Press International client. This editor, following day-to-day developments in the Middle East crisis, became intrigued with UPI Correspondent Dan Gilmore’s taxicab ride across, the desert, the flow of UPI correspondents into the trisis area and the wordage required to report events. He wanted to know something about costs. LONDON (UPI) - The cost bf covering war and crisis is an expensive business today. A 600-mile taxi ride across the desert.. .a chartered airplane ride

NEW PACK • FREESTONE • halves in heavy syrup BCAfIKC esJKIgMM. I WE GIVE HOLDEN RED STAMPS WITH EACH 10* FOOD PURCHASE I ™" THt,I4HTrouwT J r ...i ■’i ’■ ■■■ i i Wfbi PILLSBURY • OVEN READY • PLAIN OR BUTTERMILK u lklnn uAiiee ■X : 1 Binuns M (Qff|| JQf a -J ' ' 1 ■ f- wxi-. . ""■ . '- '""j* ctOKELY’S / no. / CHERRIES 2 X 39* WjW 7 BLACK RASPBERRIES -S. / PEANUT BUTTER »V.49* . Jl_ GRAPEFRUIT SECTIONS ’ “ST 2-29*; ROYAL PUDDING ES f' I ‘ • _ I lemon juice Reconstituted bottle 23* | | RMBI I EASY LIFE DETERGENT | PzjrJH i® — HEAVY WHH JUICE 0 SIDNEY jS I SUNKIST LEMONS u»39 » r RED ft . IP STOCK-UP SALE g CALIFORNIA Efl ftc i «u yo»r pantry now CANTHLOUPES-IM UapS 529 s 29-1s- - < >- - -———■ .u. . —— ■ - .a , ■■■■■ .;■» '."T. i SWIY WAX PAPER NAPKINS TISSUE SYRUP MACARONI m ;3 L S9c s f»„ £ 29* 2 39* 2 T.r' 29* L X. £■ 49* 2 P Z 25* SLOG . a . B ug a 89« spray Kl u». BREEZE RINSO BLUE SURF, k dishwasher fluffy ’tissue tissue LS9C 7SC S32‘!K7s' 59c 7»c "AH" “45< "AH" tUF y> 4- jy 2"tr"29- 4SJ39’ ■'Z.ZT '...™L„ 1. 2JL_ bu..-.l— ~....*...,.-..iJ.J., ft 1— ■ L*l£

.. .telephone calls at $3.40 a minute. SIOO “Urgent press” rate cables they all add up. These were some of the items involved in covering the Middle , East flareup in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Immediately after the traqi revolution July 14, Daniel F. Gilmore, United Press International manager, and Dieter , Hespe, UPI photographer normally based in Frankfurt, were ordered from Beirut to Baghdad. The problem was: How to get there? Therje was no Beirut-Bagh-

dad air, rail or ship service. They hailed a taxi. The cabbie took them from Beirut to the Lebanese-Syrian border and then quit. They hitched a ride on a potato truck to Damascus. In the Syrian capital they found 1 another cabbie who was willing to risk the ride over the desert where the only roads are cow paths and the bleached bones of animals remind one of the price of failure. Demands S2OO The cabbie demanded and got sloo—each. The correspondents bought water jugs, filled them with lemonade and started out. By the time they reached Baghdad, the 620mile trip from Beirut had cost the two UPI men a total of $272. Then there was the problem of getting the story and pictures of

THE DECATUM DAILY DEMOCRAT, DECATUR, INBIANA

the revolt out of Baghdad uncensored. Routine dispatches were filed i under strict censorship and were delayed from 24 to 36 hours. While Gilmore worked for two days reconstructing the story of the revolution and Hespe took and bought pictures, UPI correspondents Anthony J. Cavendish and Larry Collins were working to > help them back in Beirut. They chartered a private airplane to make a single trip to Baghdad and back. The cost including liberal “gifts,” ran to $2,350, but because other news- ■ men went along the UPI share was SBSO. The “UPI special” returned to 1 Beirut the same day carrying Gil- • more’s uncensored dispatches and f Hespe’s first pictures.

Telegraph Circuits Jammed But the telegraph circuits between Beirut and London, the main relay point for news bound for the United States, were jammed with stories abouf the Lebanese insurrection. So in the interests of speed, Gilmore’s dispatches and Hespe’s pictures were air freighted to Rome on the first available commercial air liner. From Rome, the news stories were sent to London over the UPI European teletype retwork and from London by radio teletype to New York at 60 words a minute. Hespe’s pictures were radioed from Rome to London and New York . Thus, from the time Gilmore left Rome and Hespe left Frankfurt until their stories and pic- | tures moved on wires in the Unit-

; J . . -1 —-Jed States, It had cost $764 for their transportation, (850 for the plane charter, $9 for air freight charges, $54.30 to radio one picture to New York and London and $123 for five days at hotel rooms. That brought the total to $1,800.30 not counting their Salaries, incidental expenses and special Insurance taken out by UPI. An Expensive Insurrection Few news stories have equalled : the Lebanese Insurrection in terms of proportionate cost to i news agencies. A 500-word dispatch from Beirut I to London at the regular “press” rate cost $35—7 cents a word. But after the U.S. Marines land- ■ ed in Beirut July 15, the flood of ’ correspondents in and the flow of ■ copy out became so -great that ■ I

telegraphic services between Beirut and the outside word began to bog down. Reporter*, who cannot watt up to 10 hours for their copy to be delivered, began to use “urgent press” rate — at just under 20 cents a word. When urgent press began taking several hours for delivery, they resorted to the telephone—pt $3.40 a minute to London. Connections frequently were so bad it could and did take 20 minutes—s6B—or more to dictate a 500-word dispatch. And UPI correspondents in Beirut have as many as a dozen dispatches a day. Correspondents in Beirut also called Paris, Rome, Zurich, ! Frankfurt and New York trying to ; clear communications difficulties.

PAGE ONE-A

Sometimes it took calls to three points to clear a single message. Late Coffee Break NEW YORK — (UPI) — A new coffee-counting report tram the Pan-American Coffee Bureau says 29 million cups at the brew are drowned between dinner and bedtime in the U. S„ an increase of nearly 70 per cent since 1950. . I II — • Men vs. Women LONDON — (UP!) — “Nagging wives and crotchety mothers-in-law” have drawn the ire of a British psychiatrist In coming to the defense of males. Dr. Des* , mond Curran told a medical congress recently that such women , can cause a man to fall apart faster than an unpleasant job—or almost anything else.