When Peter Brown, a gangster on trial for the Ritz Plaza jewelry heist, turns evidence against his accomplice, Crawford, and is released, Simon Drake, star reporter for the London Daily Gazette , anticipates his murder. Consequently, when MacGregor, Simon's editor-in-chief, takes him off the story, he refuses to follow orders and is fired. That night, at 3 a.m., Simon, terribly drunk, calls Mac with a fabricated scoop that he was wounded while witnessing Brown's murder. Simon's story makes the morning headlines of every London paper, and Inspector Holly of Scotland Yard informs Simon that Brown was really killed, but at 4:35 a.m. Peter Brown, Jr. then accuses Simon of murdering his father, and gang boss "Harelip" Murphy, the real killer, tries to frame Simon by planting the murder weapon in his flat. After Holly arrests Simon, his wife Pat arrives with an alibi, and he is released. Simon then finds Peter's dead body in his apartment and realizes that the gangsters mistook Peter for Simon. Meanwhile, Mac is ecstatic about Simon's sensational updates of the Brown murder case and hires him back at twice his salary along with Gazette headlines that read "This Man Is News." Two of Harelip's men, mask themselves, then tie up Pat and wait for Simon, but she sets the curtains on fire and scares them away by attracting the firemen. When a man fires a shot at Mac from within the newsroom, Holly and Simon suspect Simon's rival, reporter Johnnie Clayton, whom Simon saw leaving the Ritz with a hairlipped man the night of the robbery. Having finally found someone who can link Murphy to the crimes, Holly goes to arrest Clayton, but he escapes to Murphy's hideout, where he is killed. Although Clayton swears that Murphy has already left the country, Simon arrives home to find him bound and gagged by Pat. As Simon calls in his story, he kisses Pat.