In 1932, a Hollywood writer laid down the charge that “even newsreels are faked” in print. Ray Fernstorm of Paramount Sound News took offense to that claim of fakery and fired back.

I’m still looking for the article that angered Fernstrom and sparked his reply of defense of his craft.

“One swallow does not make a summer. And you can’t judge a craft by any one man. Newsreelmen are reporters, and if they are to remain newsreelmen they cannot permit themselves to vegetate — no more than can a reporter. Nevertheless the calling of a newsman easily may be classified as a hazardous one — we are taking of those who shoot cameras for a living — and the writer of the comeback would seem to have with him the elements of truth and reason.

But here’s what the newsman wrote:

What do you mean exactly by that remark you made in that September publication that “Even newsreels are faked”?

I don’t quite get the inference, but I have shot news for these same newsreels for ten years, and somehow I can’t swallow that remark without this query. Naturally we newsmen are forced to create some news, for there is actually not enough spot news. Take for example army and navy subjects.

If a newsreel outfit get as good idea the authorities cooperate and it becomes part of the newsreel, but listen, it does that because it IS news. When I read your crack I have to think of the boys who are out shooting every day.

When Sam Greenwald was knocked off the top of his truck by a runaway plane was he faking?

When Joe Johnson got a broken leg from a bucking bronco that knocked him and his camera for a row, was that faking for the newsreels?

When Shorty Randolph lost his life several years ago up in Washington, as he was shooting a dynamite job of a mountain, was that perhaps the kind of faking you refer to?

Before me lies a paper, dated September 12. Among a group of persons en route to Europe by plane, reported lost way off Greenland somewhere is a newsreel cameraman, Norman Alley. Out there in the unknown he still stands by his camera faking the newsreels, eh?

Feller, you burn me up.

Here is a proposition. You come when me on a few news stories as we newsreel men cover them here in Los Angeles, or I’ll get some one in New York, if you’re there. Visit with us out on the job for a while. I’ll take you out on board one of the airplane carriers, and let you stand up backwards in the rear cockpit as a navy fighter takes up and climbs.

I’ll take you up, where we so often go, atop the uppermost ledge of highest buildings. You can set up the 150 pound camera on that ledge and stand there, all day, to get a few faked scenes as you watch other fakers climb up to the top of the Radio towers across the street.

Come along, feller, and I’ll show you how much faking there is in the newsreels.