Wolverhampton

[BIAD]

I have to agree that the entire situation is so outlandish that at first glance, should've been dismissed by a serious
news-outlet.

"Serious" news outlets of the day, just as today, were not above "playing up" an incident, or at times outright making them up, to improve circulation of their work. The only difference between then and now is that "circulation" has been replaced by "ratings".

In the 1880's, a number of fledgling newspapers in the US West created a flurry of reports involving "thunderbirds" or "pterodactyls" and others played up "airships". Some of the reports may have had some basis in actual events, but the majority of them were made up out of whole cloth, entirely to improve circulation of the newspapers. As I recall, the Tombstone Epitaph was noted for such shenanigans.

That's a game that has been played for as long as there have been newspapers. It's frustrating to researchers, because it serves to cloud the subject at hand and causes them to have to spend about as much time debunking false or exaggerated news reports as they spend seriously researching events.

I have a copy of The Tombstone Epitaph and it was strangely 'a breath of fresh air' to see that -they too, wrote the OK Corral
incident as more of an opinion-piece than recording what occurred! I know that sadly, there was no 'Golden Age' of Journalism,
where what was reported was so close to the truth that it was reliable, but today's scribblers are just ridiculous in the manner
they attempt to boost their dying medium, the outrageous trash they spew out is having the opposite effect.

It's a damned shame, really.