is a strange man named gordon john bennett who ran the tribune and he had crazier stories, the gerri springerme. >> sensationalism. >> guest: the early days of competition, completely different. think of the competition to gain a crowd versus selling a copy of the best product, when you are trying to gather a crowd you need something a land and outrageous so the tribune gained huge audiences with a first-hand account of a prostitute murdered with an ax and set on fire and the editor himself witnessed the scene and described her as the most beautiful thing he had seen, the venus the milo, covered her head, they never read anything like this, they loved it so i will finish the story here, we are in trouble so they ran a series of stories where they had an exclusive report from the owner of the world at large as telephone about what they had seen on the moon. it was amazing. >> host: was it a logo? >> guest: not a logo. they discovered bats, human bats on the moon prone to fornication. it shows you, they never retracted the story. no one was able to say the story was wrong. no one knew it wasn't