Re: Names have been changed to protect the innocent

the Omrud wrote:
Donna Richoux <trio@xxxxxxxxxx> had it:

Andrew Cameron <tags2k@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Google has failed me, and so I turn to you, gentle folk of AUE. My subject:

"...names have been changed to protect the innocent."

Origins, references, discussions please. I'm thinking Leslie Nielsen,
but he must have been making a reference to something and I have no idea
what.

http://features.yahoo.com/history/0707.html

July 7 -
Jack Webb's "Dragnet" was first heard on NBC Radio
this day in 1949. The program was the first to
dramatize cases from actual police files. Each
episode on radio and TV began with the announcement:
"The story you are about to hear (see) is true; only
the names have been changed to protect the
innocent"; and ended with the somber sentence handed
down to the criminal.

The "see" refers to the TV versions, which began in 1951.

I have heard that the "this story is true" stuff was false - put
there (as in Fargo) to attract the audience.

I've been wondering lately--is there a name for the literary device of
pretending that your fiction is true? Like Gene Brewer's naming the
narrator of /K-PAX/ "Gene Brewer", or the author's writing a preface
under his or her own name saying that he found this manuscript or
collection of letters or whatever. I'm not talking about literary
frauds that are published as non-fiction.

--
Jerry Friedman

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