I often favor my satires broad, deadpan and British so Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop fit the bill. It’s a look at sensational war reportage, which despite predating television, manages to squeeze a recurring joke out of the telegraph, even.
In a case of mistaken identity, William Boot, a writer who of the sort who starts one of his nature columns with the infamous sentence, “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole” is sent to a region in Africa where civil war is expected to break out. He brings with him 500 pounds of luggage including a collapsible canoe, a canned Thanksgiving dinner, and for reasons unclear, a bunch of “cleft sticks.” He holes up with a crew of journalists in the state’s only hotel, which is guarded by a goat. The reporters wile away the uneventful rainy days drinking and otherwise abusing their unlimited expense accounts, milking lame “man on the street” commentary from the locals, and “insulting and betraying one another in circumstances of unredeemed squalor,” including filing inaccurate stories based wholly on gossip among themselves. Because of his ineptitude, Boot bumbles into reporting on the scoop of the war’s start. He’s granted the publishing world’s top distinction but refuses the award and get his contract at the paper extended—to continue writing his nature column.