PressEthic

This Reuters story is almost irresistable:

PARIS, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

"A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses," Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

But can anyone read it without skepticism? It continues as follows:

Already this year, Japan's embassy in Paris has had to repatriate at least four visitors -- including two women who believed their hotel room was being bugged and there was a plot against them.

Previous cases include a man convinced he was the French "Sun King", Louis XIV, and a woman who believed she was being attacked with microwaves, the paper cited Japanese embassy official Yoshikatsu Aoyagi as saying.

"Fragile travellers can lose their bearings. When the idea they have of the country meets the reality of what they discover it can provoke a crisis," psychologist Herve Benhamou told the paper.

Hmmm. Do these sound like healthy people who experience psychological distress due to the horrors of Paris, or tourists who perhaps already had psychological problems? As anyone who has stood in line for the Louvre can attest, there are quite a few Japanese tourists who visit Paris each year. There are bound to be a few crazies among them.

Should the story provide that context? I suppose that depends on whether or not you think news organizations should suspend disbelief when circulating inconsequential stories that are, admittedly, far more fun to read when they include absurd unchallenged hypothesese.