"What is it you do exactly at AFP?"
Not the most enticing chat-up line, it's a question I've been asked a zillion times by people who tend to imagine the Factory as a hothouse of excitement, adventure, adrenalin ... and even romance.
 On Friday, I'd scarcely uttered the words, "Well, I hope they don't announce a new prime minister in the CAR in the next hour or so, because I fancy leaving on time," when the bells went off.
Once I'd dealt with the "URGENT" sent from Bangui via Libreville and handed my version to the sub-editor, it was straightforward to notify the news agency's clients worldwide that they could expect the "2ndlead" full story in about 80 minutes: the time it would take to get all the details from those on the spot, translate them and sub it all.
The only query voiced from the "top end" of the English Desk was: "Is this an urgent all round?"
Which meant do we handle a change of government chief in an obscure African country with as much importance for Asia, Australasia and people in the Middle East as we do for the Beeb, the US State Department, Radio France Internationale, countless African and European newspapers -- and the Kansas City milkman, should he be listening to VOA?
"Indeed it is," I said. "A new prime minister is a new prime minister wherever. And if they don't care, that's not our problem."
Connections were good, the incoming French copy was clear, and by the next morning I could recognize in the Yahoo AFP story the distinct Armour touch brought by a veteran to what was no doubt a 3rd lead later in the night, along with all the background I'd swiftly plucked from a file or two in my cranium, checked and bunged into the 2nd lead.
 Yesterday was a quieter news day.
So much so that somebody at the Beeb clearly decided that the Africa pages needed "sexing up". Next thing we knew, the BBC was using its wow-look-at-this! 'Breaking News' urgent style to inform the world that the rival sides in Ivory Coast's civil war were "disarming".
Alerted to this far-fetched development, I thought, "Oh yes, and pigs are flying too".
What happens at times such as these, which are frequent (since everybody monitors everyone else in the news world), is that we have a swift Anglo-French editorial huddle -- at least, it should be rapid. Sometimes it can be slowed by too many cooks.
My view was that "the Beeb's doing a Reuter's": shorthand for a tendency in that rival factory to whip up a non-event into a story or, more subtly, to give an event the wrong spin and degree of importance by dumbing it down, oversimplifying.
Yes, AFP journalists occasionally do the same, but it's less of a habit, which is why clients sometimes prefer to publish the higher, if inaccurate, death tolls and other "sexy" tidbits headlined by the "opposition". The more blood, the worse the disaster, the better...
But we agreed that the BBC's account of events needed checking. I guess once Auntie saw what we'd done with it, she calmed down, as shown in her later version linked here, though it still goes rather "hard".
 Checking proved to mean a quick 'phone call to one of our people in Abidjan, Laurent, who'd written a French "curtain-raiser" story overnight on routine initial moves towards disarmament and the hopes expressed in Ivory Coast that it might even get off the ground by Christmas.
He confirmed our suspicions about hype, having already given such fresh news as there was in a story our "Anglophone" journalist in town, Lauren, was "turning round" for us.
Lauren called me to discuss the angle and soon afterwards sent us AFP's version of the disarmament, with our own sources, where she didn't have anybody yet turning in any weapons.
Obviously, this is no claim that the Factory always gets things right when others don't. We do miss stories, make occasional mistakes and issue corrections like everybody else. And sometimes the "competition" does have the better angle.
For non-journalists who've so often asked me that opening question, what happened there is a textbook example of why you shouldn't always believe what you hear and read, even on a dull day.
When hellzapoppin' and several "big stories" are on the boil, the pressure to come up with the hottest headlines and "lead paragraphs" is immense, especially now the Net has joined 24-hour broadcasting and the race for the news is no longer a matter of hours, but of minutes.
You don't need to be told what the first casualty of that kind of competition can be.
What's far more surprising is how often the pros still get it right, when being right can mean being less eye-catching.
Were it up to me, the upper hand would go to the faction that favours providing far fewer "news" stories, with less superficial coverage than the game currently allows most of us for the events that really are important.
But it's hard to reverse a trend, however dangerous.
As for Laurent, he told me this week that he's in the sixth circle of the inferno. Once I twigged -- he'd taken the "Inferno Test" I mentioned on Tuesday -- I had to confess: I was right down in Number Eight.
It can hardly get worse.
1:04:31 PM link 
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