6
An Australian TV Crew Found A Lost Hiker, Delayed Getting Him Treatment So They Could Film An Interview
In 1999, American tourist Robert Bogucki decided to trek across Australia's Great Sandy Desert in search of spiritual enlightenment, which is a bit harder to find in, like, a nice suite at the Marriott. Since the Great Sandy Desert is exactly what it sounds like, Australian police subsequently got the chance to seek some spiritual enlightenment of their own while mounting a massive search-and-rescue operation for Bogucki's lost ass.
The search effort became a media sensation in Australia -- and that may have saved Bogucki's life. After 43 hellish days, long after the authorities had given up and assumed he was eaten by scorpions or something, Bogucki was spotted by a helicopter carrying a Channel 9 camera crew to the search camp. The crew landed near the starving, sunburned hiker ... and immediately started rolling.
Instead of contacting the police and rushing Bogucki to a hospital, Channel 9 kept him in the desert to film an interview and some footage of him stumbling around and drinking muddy water. Leaked footage of the interview shows that it went on for at least 17 and a half minutes before he got a drink of clean water (shit, we get dry lips just saying a full sentence). Unsurprisingly, Bogucki wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible, but the crew insisted on dicking around in the desert for a while.
When they did go, they ignored a medical camp five minutes away and flew an hour to the town of Broome, where Channel 9's reporter and transmitting equipment happened to be located. The network defended themselves by saying it was Bogucki's idea, apparently forgetting that they had recorded the whole thing. Judge for yourself:
The cameraman can clearly be heard interrupting the pilot when he says they can fly to the nearby base, saying, "straight back to Broome would be good." On the way there, they finally offered Bogucki a banana ... which his unprepared body promptly rejected, causing him to vomit. Naturally, the crew touched down again, hustled him out of the helicopter, and filmed him retching and writhing on the ground. This footage was used in their report as the moment they supposedly found him. At this point, we're honestly surprised that they didn't have him sign a reality TV contract and fly him straight to the set of Australian Big Brother.
5
CBS Tried To Fund An Invasion Of Haiti
In 1966, CBS News stumbled upon a secret plan to overthrow the government of Haiti, as one does. The invasion was being planned by a group of Haitian and Cuban exiles led by Rolando "El Tigre" Masferrer, a man with the mind of a skink and the sexual charisma of two much uglier skinks. Masferrer had led an anti-Castro paramilitary group during the Cuban Revolution before fleeing to Miami, where he cooked up his master plan with ex-OSS mercenary Mitchell "The Wizard of Whispering Death" WerBell. (Yes, every single person involved in this had a Metal Gear Solid-like nickname.) Since U.S. support for an invasion of Cuba had dried up after that whole Bay of Pigs shitshow, they needed a new base. So they decided they'd invade Haiti, overthrow bloodsoaked voodoo tyrant Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and use the country as the launching point for a subsequent invasion of Cuba.
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