Monday, April 10, 2006

They're Passing Out Pulitzer's Today

Nothing beats a good piece of investigative journalism. Take this, for example
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12247590/):
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A Malaysian man said he nearly fainted when he received a U.S. $218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up within 10 days or face prosecution, a newspaper reported Monday.

Yahaya Wahab said he disconnected his late father's phone line in January after he died and settled the 84-ringgit (U.S. $23) bill, the New Straits Times reported.

But Telekom Malaysia later sent him a 806,400,000,000,000.01-ringgit (U.S. $218 trillion) bill for recent telephone calls along with orders to settle within 10 days or face legal proceedings, the newspaper reported.

Here's the best part--the investigative part:
It wasn't clear whether the bill was a mistake, or if Yahaya's father's phone line was used illegally after his death.

Wow. That's really some crack reporting. So to speak.

I guess that would be pretty difficult to determine--except that if you gave every one of 6.5B people on earth a cellphone, each one would have to run up a bill of over $33,000 to cumulatively hit 218 trillion dollars.

I know I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that "illegal usage of Yahaya's father's phone line" might not have been the problem.

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