Dateline: Dovenil, Sector Three, Day 183, 2417 GST. Your Topical News reporter on this small planet at the Union's rim was unable today to locate for comment any of the high officials of this alien civilization directly concerned with the order for the deportation of exchange student-observer Hubert Harrison, charged with theft and violent assault on the person of a Dovenilid citizen. Union citizen Harrison was unavailable for comment at this time, but Topical News will present his views and such other clues when more ensues.
Marlowe grunted. Journalese was getting out of hand again. That last rhyming sentence was sure to stick in the audience's brains. It might be only another advertising gimmick, but if they started doing it with the body of the news itself, it might be well to feed Topical enough false leads to destroy what little reputation for comprehensibility they had left.
He touched his interphone switch.
"Uh ... Mary, what was the hooper on that broadcast?"
"Under one per cent, sir."
Which meant that, so far, the Body Politic hadn't reacted.
"Thank you. Is there anything else coming in?"
"Not at the moment, sir."
"What's—" Cabbage. "What's Dalish ud Klavan doing?"