Journalists are routinely trusted to write the facts of a situation and inform the general public of the current events in the world. In Scoop, written by Evelyn Waugh, the news industry does not act in a reliable and trustworthy way. This novel uses the innocent William Boot as a vessel to convey the vast corruption of the journalism business.
The corruption begins when William Boot meets with Lord Copper, believing his job as a nature writer to be in jeopardy. As the owner of the paper The Daily Beast, Lord Copper gets to make decisions on who will write which articles, so when he hears about John Boot, a well-respected novelist, he immediately tells his assistant, Mr. Salter, “No, I tell you who I want: Boot,” (16) which leads to Salter
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The former nature article writer experiences first-hand the deception and manipulation that goes in to writing a front page worthy piece. The journalists in Ishmaelia do not seem very surprised when Shumble, a fellow reporter in Ishmaelia, sends out an untruthful story. In fact, Corker tells Boot not to deny the report, saying “Risky, old boy, and unprofessional. It’s the kind of thing you can do once or twice in a real emergency but it doesn’t pay.” (119), implying that it does not matter if the article has any truth to it and it is useless to disprove an inaccurate article. Waugh furthers the corruption by showing that only one journalist has the decency and common sense to write about the untruthfulness of Shambles piece, making the other wish were the ones to do so. Another suggestion Slater makes happens when he says “…but it doesn’t pay”. This shows how, as long as an article sells papers, most journalists and publishers will print it, no matter the factual evidence or research put into the piece. Even though William Boot seems appalled by the process he sees fellow reporter using, he has some fault in falsifying articles as