Mays continued looking at the exhibits, but a few minutes later the reporter overheard Mays say softly to his companion, "Why don't we take a look upstairs?"

One national reporter overheard several people saying, "It'll be a wonder if he gets out of here alive."

A reporter for the New York Sun newspaper overheard the disturbance, and wrote an article about it the next day.

The legend also states that a reporter from The Sun newspaper in New York overheard a conversation between the manager of Delmonico's Restaurant and Charles Townsend.

The reporter had overheard a telephone call that Reggie had made from the beach club.

At the opening of one project, a reporter overheard one Municipal Art Society official commenting on SHoP's installation design.

"They are shooting at us," a reporter overheard an officer ask in a radio exchange in Pristina.

A reporter, walking away, might inadvertently overhear a tone of voice that is harsher, a vocabulary that is coarser.

The story got started, he said, when a reporter overheard him in the restaurant chatting with friends and family about moving to Brooklyn.

But local reporters apparently overheard the exchange and it became garbled in the retelling, and the African National Congress began receiving queries about the Mayor's health.