Answers to Scoops

Updated with questions included:

1) The German newspaper Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote on July 5, 1776 was the first to announce which major development?

The adoption of the American Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. At the time German was the second most widely spoken language in Pennsylvania after English, leading to anti-immigration rants by the likes of Benjamin Franklin.

2) The Times (London) had one of the greatest scoops of all time on July 13, 1878, publishing in more than 20,000 words almost the entire text of a major pan-European agreement (both in the original French and English). Paris correspondent Henri de Blowitz engineered the stunner on the same day leaders including Britain's Benjamin Disraeli and Germany's Bismarck were to sign the deal in Berlin. What was the treaty in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish war all about?

The 1878 Treaty of Berlin shepherded by Bismarck redrew the map of the Balkans, with the Ottoman Empire losing ground. The independence of Serbia, Romania and Montenegro was formally recognised, the Austro-Hungarian Empire took over Bosnia and Herzegovina and Russia was granted control of parts of present-day Turkey.

The Times’ Henri de Blowitz later revealed that his source was a member of the clerical staff. They ate in the same restaurant every day during the conference, wearing hats of the same type and colour. The hats were hung on neighbouring pegs and Blowitz before leaving took the source’s hat, with the information hidden in the lining.

Blowitz appears as a character in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman novella The Road to Charing Cross, in which the fictional Flashman is portrayed as the one exchanging hats with Blowitz.

3) In a 19-part series in McClure's magazine from 1902 to 1904 Ida Tarbell doggedly pursued a corporate giant whose monopolistic push had affected, among others, her father's business. She unearthed damaging internal documents and her interviews with a senior company executive helped undermine its position. The articles were soon compiled and published as a best-selling book. The company was put on the defensive and the final nail was a Supreme Court ruling in 1911. Name the company?

Ida Tarbell investigated the dominance of John D Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company and its alliance with railroad companies, which put smaller operators including Tarbell’s father out of business. Even before Tarbell’s exposes, progressive activist/journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd targeted Standard Oil in articles such as this. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the government’s plan to break up Standard Oil, ending its monopoly.

4) Rachel Beer in 1891 became the first woman to be editor of a national newspaper in Britain when she took charge of the Observer, owned by her family. Her biggest scoop came seven years later when an army major in hiding in London admitted to her that he had produced false documents to frame another officer, who spent years in jail wrongly convicted of spying for Germany. Who was the framed officer?

Rachel Beer, the first editor of a national newspaper in Britain, interviewed French Army Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, who was in hiding in London. He admitted to Beer that he had produced false documents to frame Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was convicted for treason on charges of spying for Germany and sent to the penal colony of Devil’s Island. The framing of Dreyfus, who was Jewish, triggered a huge anti-Semitism controversy in France, whose implications reverberate to this day. In January 1898, a few months before Rachel Beer’s scoop, French novelist Emile Zola in his open letter J’accuse alleged that the political establishment, military and the press all conspired to conceal a miscarriage of justice. Dreyfus was tried a second time and convicted again, only to be pardoned by the President in a face-saving measure.

NB: Didn’t say French army in the question thinking it would be a giveaway hint.

5) In December 1906 William Randolph Hearst's newspaper New York American printed a series of revelations centred around correspondence by lawyer and lobbyist Colonel Henry Kowalsky. The headlines screamed '-------------'s amazing attempt to influence our Congress exposed', 'Full Text of the Agreement between -----------------and his paid agents in Washington', ' Infamous Cruelties', Torture of Women and Children'. The letters published included efforts to bribe journalists and members of Congress. Following the expose, the U.S. aligned its policy with Britain on this issue and within two years a major change in status took place. Whose extensive lobbying effort in the U.S. was exposed? 

The target of William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper - 'King Leopold's amazing attempt to influence our Congress exposed', 'Full Text of the Agreement between King -King Leopold--and his paid agents in Washington'.

 The expose highlighted the lobbying efforts of Belgium’s King Leopold II, who was facing intensifying criticism especially in Britain for mass atrocities in the Congo, which was under his direct control. The growing movement against Leopold, described in Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, led to the Belgian state assuming control of the Congo in 1908.

6) The Soviet communist party organ Pravda and associated Soviet-era newspaper Izvestia, thanks to Commissar for Foreign Affairs Leon Trotsky, revealed in full a secret document from the Tsarist imperial archives in 1917. The Manchester Guardian published the leaked document in full three days later. (Hint: The document in question was prepared in 1916 and also approved by Italy and Czarist Russia)

Pravda and Izvestia revealed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France signed in 1916 and approved by Italy and Imperial Russia. It aimed to divide the Ottoman territories in the Middle East between the British and the French. Their World War I allies Italy and Russia were allotted parts of Turkey. While the Sykes-Picot borders did not directly come into force, it formed the basis for the subsequent colonial borders in the Middle East after World War I.

7) The Cologne Post was a newspaper set up by British soldier-journalists who were part of the Allied troops occupying Rhineland after Germany's defeat in World War I. They were the first to reveal the details of something even before the details reached the German government in Berlin. What?

The Cologne Post was the first to reveal the details of the Treaty of Versailles in the aftermath of World War I

8) This secret speech in a closed meeting on February 25, 1956 was leaked and published in the New York Times, Le Monde and the Observer in June that year. Whose speech?

Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev’s February 25, 1956 speech denouncing his predecessor Stalin.

9) This expose via whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg started with an article in the New York Times on June 13, 1971. The Nixon administration moved court to block further publication. But Ellsberg went on to give details to the Washington Post as well. Both the Post and the NYT took up the court challenge and the U.S. government lost in a landmark ruling. What was the expose and what did the ruling establish?

Daniel Ellsberg revealed the details of the Pentagon Papers, an official study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam, which expressed deep scepticism of ongoing policy. The Nixon administration’s efforts to block publication led to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the government could not invoke prior restraint, censoring in advance what a news organisation planned to publish.

10) A political reporter in her twenties revealed on the Rand Daily Mail in 1977 that 'brain damage' was the likely cause in the death of a prominent human rights activist in prison, contradicting the government claim that he died after a long hunger strike. Decades later she went on to be a city mayor, provincial premier and the leader of the main opposition party. Name the country, the journalist-turned-politician and the activist who was tortured and killed.

The young reporter was Helen Zille and she established that human rights activist Steve Biko was tortured to death by the Apartheid regime in South Africa. In the post-Apartheid era Zille served as Mayor of Cape Town, Premier of Western Cape and leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance. ‘Rand’ Daily Mail was the hint in the question.

11) This massacre involving troops was first mentioned by a rebel radio network in early 1982. On January 27, the Washington Post reported '-----------Peasants Describe Mass Killing', while the New York Times headline said 'Massacre of Hundreds Is Reported in --------------', contradicting the Reagan administration's denials. Where? (Hint: In 1993 the New Yorker devoted an entire issue to an investigative article on this massacre and U.S. policy.

El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. Washington Post here and NYT here. The New Yorker’s December 6, 1993 issue was entirely devoted to Mark Danner’s article on El Mozote.

12) On April 16, 1987 Dagens Eko (Echo of the Day), the news arm of Swedish public radio reported that a major arms contract involved millions of dollars in bribes to get support from the army, bureaucracy and ruling party of another country. Two years later, this scandal played a major role in the electoral downfall of the ruling party in that country. The scandal and the country?

India’s arms deal with the Swedish company Bofors. The corruption allegations followed up by Indian media played a big role in denting the popularity of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In December 1984 he had led his Congress party to an unprecedented 400-plus seats out of 543. Five years later, the Congress dropped below the 200 mark and lost power.

13) In June 1988 the local bureau of a prominent newspaper reported that the Deputy Mayor of a small city had received unlisted shares of a company at cut-price rates in exchange for favourable real estate deals. While the story did not make it to the front page, the bureau expanded its investigation to the capital city. They bypassed the newspaper's high-profile political reporters, fearing they would scuttle the investigation. The preferential share scandal during a stock and asset boom reached all the way to top and within a year, the ruling party chief, prominent ministers and the Prime Minister were forced to resign. Country and newspaper? 

Japan’s Recruit scandal began with the Asahi Shimbun’s Yokohama bureau reporting that the Deputy Mayor of Kawasaki city received cut-price shares of Recruit’s subsidiary Recruit Cosmos, shortly before the shares were publicly listed. Asahi Shimbun’s Yokohama bureau along with others expanded their investigation into Tokyo, finding the recipients of cut-price Recruit shares included the secretaries of Prime Minister Noburu Takeshita, the ruling LDP’s chief Shintaro Abe (Shinzo Abe’s father), Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa (later PM) and former PM Yasuhiro Nakasone. Abe, Miyazawa and finally Takeshita resigned (Takeshita’s top aide committed suicide a day after his resignation). The Recruit scandal was at the tail end of a stock and asset bubble in Japan. A market crash and the ‘Lost Decade’ soon followed.

As for Recruit, it has reinvented itself. Articles here and here.

14) An interview with Manoj Prabhakar by India's Outlook magazine in June 1997 set off a chain of revelations that led to life bans on three international team captains. What is the controversy?

Outlook magazine’s interview with former Indian cricketer Manoj Prabhakar blew the lid off cricket’s match-fixing scandal. A series of revelations followed, and three international captains - Mohammad Azharuddin (India), Salim Malik (Pakistan) and Hansie Cronje (South Africa) - were banned for life. Cronje died in a plane crash in 2003, Azharuddin was elected to India’s Parliament for a term, while Salim Malik apologised this year.

15) On January 17, 1998 X wrote on his website that Newsweek had spiked a story by its investigative reporter Michael Isikoff and revealed the details. From his one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood, California, X scooped mainstream media on which major story?

X was conservative provocateur and digital news pioneer Matt Drudge, who revealed Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. More here.

16) In 2003, what one of its reporters saw in Hong Kong prompted the Chinese magazine Caijing to investigate and question official versions on a particular issue. Over the course of a month, Caijing produced weekly supplements devoted to this issue in addition to its regular content. What did Caijing bring to the public eye in mainland China?

SARS epidemic. Caijing magazine was alerted to the scale of the crisis after one of its reporters noticed the widespread use of face masks by commuters in Hong Kong.

17) The identity of a source who played a crucial role in a series of scoops dating back to 1972 was revealed by a lawyer and family friend in an article for Vanity Fair in May 2005. Who and which scoop?

The Vanity Fair article in May 2005 revealed that ‘Deep Throat’, a major source in the Watergate scandal, was W. Mark Felt, the number two in the FBI at the time. ‘Deep Throat’ had played a big role in the scoops by the Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Felt was in his nineties when he and his family decided to reveal his identity. He died in 2008.