Pseudo Bomb/Terrorist Threat

There was a pseudo bomb/terrorist threat made against a nice hotel here in town a couple days ago. Since it is my job to find out what happened, I called the hotel and asked for the general manager. After Mr. Manager gave his statement, he paused and then asked me the most ridiculous question. "This isn't going in the paper is it?"

I have been asked this question many times. What I don't understand is, when people know they're talking to a reporter about a specific event, why else would we want all the details? Maybe to feed our sick need of wanting to know? Maybe it's because we have nothing to write about and we just call people to get information and not write about it. COME ON!

But that wasn't even the best part of all of this. Since this was a "touchy subject" being a pseudo bomb/terrorist threat and all, and since this was a nice hotel, Mr. Manager put me on speaker so a woman could tell me that I'm "not allowed to write about this."

"Excuse me?" Was my reply. I sternly informed this woman she couldn't give or not give permission for me to write my story. It's public record and if she wanted an accurate story she better let me use Mr. Manager's comments.

In the end Mr. Manager spoke to my editor and I got my comments for a my brief. Sometimes you have to jump through a lot hoops to get a story. Sometimes they're necessary, sometimes they're not. This time they were absolutely ridiculous.