Journo's are suckers...oh yes they are!
This makes me chuckle...and lifts spirits slightly...
Just chucking in my bobs'worth! During Telic, a young and fruity local journalist managed to get through to an operational phone number on my base...(its not really that hard, just phone the station/base/unit/depot...etc..etc...that you are interested in and then type in a combination of extension numbers until somebody picks up the receiver!).
Journo type then tried to 'pump' information from a colleague under false identity and rank...said colleague very quickly cottoned-onto the fact that the caller was not at all bona fide.
What was funny, however, was that instead of redirecting the gullable chap onto the MOD Press Officer as you would normally, it had been a long shift and he thought it would be much more amusing to fill said journo full of fancy, impressive sounding poo!
Worked a treat it did!
Extract from part of a very long story from local rag: 'The (unnamed, of course!) Echo'.
''The Tucano's were specially modified at RAF Spadeadam to carry individual loads of up to four Lithuanian made Paveway III 'smart bombs', which use solar energy to power them at high speed into their targets. The squadron is to be imminently deployed to an unnamed airbase in Libya''
Oh, how we chuckled...still makes me smile!
Hope it made you smile, too!