The Portland Daily Bulletin ran coverage critical of the Portland police. The Portland police bureau retaliated for critical coverage in the Portland Daily Bulletin by planting a fake story. wikisource 
Newspaper rivalry in Oregon was famously bitter in the pioneer period, and other papers, notably the Herald, delighted in the Bulletin's embarrassment. Three years later the Bulletin was out of business. wikisource
Under the editorship of James O'Meara in 1872, the Bulletin conducted a campaign against the police department, which it accused of inefficiency in suppressing and solving crime in the city.
This strained relations between the paper and the police; and one day, with the connivance of other reporters, police headquarters "planted" a fake story of the discovery of the murdered and mutilated body of a missing man.
The Bulletin's reporter swallowed the story whole, including the detail of the body's being brought up by the anchor of a ship putting out for sea; the skull fractured, throat cut, and 18 bullet-wounds in the body.