W. Joseph Campbell

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Myth appeal runs deep abroad; Watergate a case in point

In 1897, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Spanish-American War, Washington Post, Watergate myth, Yellow Journalism on October 7, 2010 at 10:20 am

I  spoke about my new book, Getting It Wrong, at a superbly organized American University alumni event last night, at a venue commanding spectacular views of Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains.

Following my talk, which focused on three of the 10 media-driven myths debunked in Getting It Wrong, I was asked by one of the people in attendance whether myths have similarly emerged about the media in other countries.

A very good question, I replied: I really don’t think so.

Maybe in Britain, I suggested, given the robust media scene there. But I couldn’t say for sure.

While I had to hedge a bit on the question, there’s no doubt that myth appeal runs deep from the United States to other countries. That is, news organizations outside the United States not infrequently repeat what are American media myths.

Media-driven myths, I have noted, can and do travel far, and well.  Take, for example, the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate.

The notion is often embraced in news media in the United States and overseas that the investigative reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, then-young reporters for the Washington Post, took down Richard Nixon and his corrupt presidency.

A measure of the myth’s international appeal can found in a report that aired today on Australia’s ABC radio network, which described Woodward as “one of the Washington Post journalists who brought down a U.S. President.”

Not even Woodward embraces that claim. He said in an interview in 2005:

“To say the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.”

And he’s right. Earthy, perhaps, but right.

I discuss the heroic-journalist myth in Getting It Wrong, noting that it’s a simplistic and misleading interpretation of what was a sprawling and complex scandal. Watergate’s web of misconduct forced Nixon from office and landed nearly 20 of his top aides, associates, and cabinet officers in jail.

To roll up a scandal of such dimension, I write,  required the collective, if not always the coordinated, efforts of special prosecutors, bipartisan congressional panels, federal judges, the FBI, and, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered Nixon to surrender audiotapes that proved his complicity in the Watergate cover-up.

Against that tableau, journalism’s contributions to unraveling Watergate were modest—certainly not decisive.

But because the heroic-journalist interpretation is such an unambiguous assertion of the media’s presumed power, it tends to travel well.

The same holds for the purported vow of William Randolph Hearst to “furnish the war” with Spain.

Hearst supposedly made the pledge in a cable to the artist Frederic Remington, who was in Cuba in early 1897, on assignment for Hearst’s New York Journal to draw illustrations of the rebellion against Spanish colonial rule.

The anecdote lives on as one of the most famous and delicious in American journalism—even though it is buttressed by no supporting documentation. And Hearst denied ever having made such statement.

It is, however, a tale almost too good to be disbelieved, given that it so effectively represents Hearst as warmonger. The tale’s sheer deliciousness is another reason why the anecdote turns up more than infrequently in news outlets abroad, especially in Spanish-language media.

The media myths associated with Watergate, the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, and the War of the Worlds radio dramatization of 1938 were the principal elements of my talk last night.

Those myths live on, I said, in part because “they are appealing reductive, in that they minimize the complexity of historical events and offer simplistic and misleading interpretations instead. The Washington Post no more brought down Nixon that Walter Cronkite swayed [Lyndon] Johnson’s views about Vietnam.

“Yet those and other media myths endure because they present unambiguous, easy-to-remember explanations for complex historic events.”

WJC

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Pentagon ‘caught creating false narrative’ about Lynch? How so?

In Debunking, Jessica Lynch, Media myths, Washington Post on October 6, 2010 at 10:51 am

The Los Angeles Times indulged the other day in the tenacious media myth about the Pentagon’s concocting the hero-warrior tale about Jessica Lynch early in the Iraq War.

It was in fact the Washington Post that thrust the erroneous account about Lynch’s supposed battlefield heroics into the public domain, in a sensational front-page report published April 3, 2003. The article appeared beneath the headline: “‘She was fighting to the death.'”

The hero-warrior tale offered by the Post–which said Lynch had fought fiercely in an ambush in southern Iraq before being shot, stabbed, and taken prisoner–was picked up by news organizations around the world and turned Lynch into the best-known Army private of the war.

But the story wasn’t true.

Lynch never fired a shot in the ambush in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003. Her gun jammed, she later said. She was neither shot nor stabbed; she suffered shattering injuries in the crash of a Humvee as it tried to flee the attack.

A U.S. special forces team rescued Lynch from a hospital in Iraq two days before the Post‘s erroneous hero-warrior tale was published.

In invoking the Lynch case, in an article examining why few Medals of Honor have been awarded in the Iraq and Afghan wars, the Los Angeles Times said:

“The medals process was tarnished when the Pentagon was caught creating false narratives to justify medals awarded in the high-profile cases of Army Ranger Pat Tillman and Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.”

The matter of “false narratives” in the Tillman case is murky. The unrelated Lynch case is more clear-cut.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my new book debunking 10 prominent media-driven myths, the Pentagon was not the source for the Post‘s botched hero-warrior report. Vernon Loeb, one of the authors of the “fighting to the death” story, was quite explicit on that point.

Loeb, who then was the Washington-based defense correspondent for the Post, said in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air program in December 2003:

“I could never get anybody from the Pentagon to talk about those reports at all.”

He added that “the Pentagon was completely unwilling to comment on those reports at all. They wouldn’t say anything about Jessica Lynch.”

Loeb also said that the Post had been “told by some really good intelligence sources here in Washington that, you know, there were indications that she had, you know, fired back and resisted her capture and actually been shot and possibly stabbed doing so.”

Those sources have never been identified. But Loeb, who now is a senior editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, scoffed at the interviewer’s suggestion that the Post‘s erroneous “fighting to the death” report was the result of clever manipulation by the Pentagon.

“I just didn’t see the Pentagon trying to create a hero where there was none,” Loeb said. “I mean …they never showed any interest in doing that, to me.”

On another occasion, Loeb was quoted in a commentary in the New York Times as saying:

“Far from promoting stories about Lynch, the military didn’t like the story.”

Lynch, who still struggles with the effects of injuries suffered in the Humvee crash, never claimed to have fought heroically in Iraq. She has suggested, though,  that “it would have been easy for me” to have adopted the hero’s mantle and embraced the  accounts about her supposed derring-do.

She was honorably discharged from the military in 2003–and was awarded the bronze star (see photo) for meritorious combat service, a decision that prompted low-level controversy.

The Lynch case–and the Post‘s hero-warrior tale–gave rise to another dispute about medals for valor.

According to Michael DeLong, a Marine lieutenant general who was deputy commander of U.S. Central Command in 2003, “politicians from her home state, West Virginia,” pressed the military “to award her the Medal of Honor.”

The requests were based on the Post‘s hero-warrior tale and “rose up the ladder until finally it reached me,” DeLong recalled in 2007 in a commentary in the New York Times, adding:

“In the case of Private Lynch, additional time was needed, since she was suffering from combat shock and loss of memory; facts, therefore, had to be gathered from other sources. The military simply didn’t know at that point whether her actions merited a medal.

“This is why, when the request landed on my desk, I told the politicians that we’d need to wait. I made it clear that no one would be awarded anything until all of the evidence was reviewed.

“The politicians did not like this,” DeLong added. “They called repeatedly, through their Congressional liaison, and pressured us to recommend her for the medal, even before all the evidence had been analyzed. I would not relent and we had many heated discussions.”

DeLong did not identify the politicians who lobbied for Lynch to be awarded the Medal of Honor but he wrote that they “repeatedly said that a medal would be good for women in the military; I responded that the paramount issue was finding out what had really happened.”

WJC

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1897 flashback: Committing ‘jailbreaking journalism’

In 1897, Anniversaries, Newspapers, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on October 4, 2010 at 7:08 am

William Randolph Hearst‘s New York Journal pulled off one of the greatest coups in participatory journalism 113 years ago this week, in what a rival newspaper called the case of “jail-breaking journalism.”

Decker

The episode centered around Karl Decker, a Journal reporter whom Hearst had sent to Cuba, and Evangelina Cisneros, a political prisoner jailed in Havana on suspicion of conspiring to kill a senior Spanish military officer.

Cisneros, who was 19, claimed the officer had made her the target of his unwelcome sexual advances.

She had been jailed more than a year, without trial, when Hearst’s Journal described her plight in a front-page article in August 1897.

The report claimed, incorrectly, that Cisneros already had been tried by a martial tribunal and was “in imminent danger” of being sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment at Spain’s penal colony on Ceuta, off the north Africa coast.

As I wrote in my 2006 book, The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms, the error mattered little to the Journal: “Far more important was that the prolonged imprisonment of Cisneros represented a brutish and unambiguous example of Spain’s cruel treatment of Cuban women—a topic of not infrequent attention in U.S. newspapers.”

In 1897, Spain still ruled Cuba, however tenuously. It had failed to put down an island-wide rebellion that began in 1895, despite having sent nearly 200,000 troops to Cuba. The Cuban rebellion was to give rise in 1898 to the Spanish-American War.

Following its disclosure about Cisneros’ jailing, the Journal organized a petition drive among American women, calling on the queen regent of Spain to release Cisneros. The newspaper claimed to have collected signatures from more than 10,000 women, but Spanish authorities were unmoved.

So in late summer 1897, Hearst sent Decker to Cuba, ostensibly as the Journal‘s correspondent in Havana. In reality, Decker was under orders to secure the release of Cisneros.

Evangelina Cisneros

With the quiet help of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Cuba–and with the crucial support of a clandestine smuggling network in Havana–Decker succeeded. In the early hours of October 7, 1897, Decker and two accomplices broke the bars of Cisneros’ cell and spirited her out of jail.

She was hidden for nearly three days at the home of one of the accomplices, Carlos F. Carbonell, an affluent, American-educated Cuban banker whom Cisneros later married.

Then, dressed as a boy, the diminutive Cisneros was smuggled aboard the Seneca, a passenger steamer bound for New York City, where Hearst organized a thunderous welcome for her.

Nearly 75,000 people turned out at New York’s Madison Square to welcome Cisneros and Decker, who had separately returned to the United States aboard a Spanish-flagged passenger vessel.

Cisneros “was rapturously received” in New York, I wrote in The Year That Defined American Journalism, “not because she was a daring and clever prison escapee, but because she was a frail and wily embodiment of the Cuban struggle for political independence from Spain.”

Some U.S. newspapers scoffed at the Journal‘s coup. “Jail-breaking journalism,” said the Chicago Times-Herald. But many other newspapers and trade journals cheered the exploit.

The Fourth Estate, for example, congratulated Decker and the Journal on an “international triumph” and saluted them for having “smashed journalistic records.”

For the Journal–which never was shy about self-promotion–the Cisneros jailbreak and rescue were “epochal,” the apogee of its brand of activist-oriented yellow journalism.

Interestingly, the Cisneros jailbreak fell quickly from the front pages of American newspapers–including those of the Journal. And the case was rarely mentioned in the American press, or by American political figures, as war loomed with Spain in the spring of 1898.

But “jail-breaking journalism” merits being recalled this week, as an episode unique in American journalism.

WJC

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the Journal, the Cisneros jailbreak and rescue was “epochal,” the Journal, the Cisneros jailbreak and rescue was “epochal,”[i] a “supreme achievement of the journalism of action.”

[i]. Duval [Decker], “Evangelina Cisneros Rescued by the Journal,” New York Journal (10 October 1897).

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‘War of the Worlds’ radio panic was overstated

In Anniversaries, Debunking, Media myths, Media myths and radio, War of the Worlds on October 3, 2010 at 8:02 am

Welles in bronze

October always brings frequent reminders about radio’s most memorable and myth-beclouded program–Orson Welles’ superb dramatization of the War of the Worlds that aired on Halloween eve 1938.

So realistic was Welles’ show, so alarming were its simulated news reports of invading Martians, that listeners by the tens of thousands—or more—were convulsed in panic and hysteria.

Fright beyond measure gripped the country that night; it was the night that panicked America.

Or so the media myth has it.

The delicious, ever-appealing tale of mass hysteria sown by the War of the Worlds program is one of the 10 prominent media-driven myths that I address and debunk in my new book, Getting It Wrong.

I note that some Americans were frightened by the program. But most listeners, in overwhelming numbers, were not. They recognized it for what it was—an imaginative and entertaining radio show that aired in its usual Sunday evening time slot.

Still, this media myth is just too well-known, too entrenched in the American consciousness, ever to fall into disuse.

That’s why October brings numerous references to the War of the Worlds show and the panic it supposedly caused. Indeed, just the other day, an item posted at examiner.com said the program fooled “over a million people into thinking the world was actually under attack by Martians.”

But there’s simply no data to support such claims.

Hadley Cantril, a psychologist at Princeton University who helped promote the notion that the Welles’ program caused widespread panic, drew on surveys to estimate that at least 6 million people listened to the hour-long program, which aired live over the CBS radio network.

Of those listeners, Cantril estimated, 1.2 million were “frightened,” “disturbed,” or “excited” by what they heard.

But as I note in Getting It Wrong, “Cantril left unclear the distinctions among ‘frightened,’ ‘disturbed,’ or ‘excited.’ Nor did Cantril not estimate how many listeners acted on their fears and excitement,” a critical element had there indeed been widespread panic that night.

I further note that “one can watch a horror movie and feel ‘frightened,’ ‘disturbed,’ or ‘excited,’ but such responses are hardly synonymous with panic or hysteria.” Far from it.

The notion that mass panic had accompanied the airing the War of the Worlds program spread quickly, mostly by U.S. newspapers which reported the day after the show that hysteria had swept the country.

Their reports, however, “were almost entirely anecdotal,” I note, “and largely based on sketchy wire service roundups that emphasized breadth over in-depth detail.”

Newspapers simply had no reliable way of testing or ascertaining the validity of the sweeping claims they made about the War of the Worlds program.

Here’s why.

The War of the Worlds dramatization aired from 8-9 on Sunday night in the East, a time when most newspaper newsrooms were thinly staffed.

Reporting on the reactions to The War of The Worlds broadcast represented no small challenge, especially for morning newspapers having late-night deadlines.

“Given the constraints of time and staffing,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “relying on wire services such as the Associated Press became essential. This dependency, in turn, had the effect of promoting and deepening the notion that panic was widespread that night: On a late-breaking story of uncertain dimension and severity, many newspapers took their lead from wire service dispatches.

“They had little choice.”

The AP’s reports about the program essentially were roundups of reactions culled from the agency’s bureaus across the country, I write. Typically, AP roundups emphasized sweep—pithy anecdotal reports from many places—over depth and detail.

The anecdotes about people frightened by the show tended to be sketchy, shallow, and small-bore. But their scope contributed to and confirmed the sense that widespread panic was afoot that night.

The reliance on wire service roundups helps explain the consensus among U.S. newspapers that the broadcast had created mass panic.

Interestingly, newspaper content also helps to undercut the notion that panic and hysteria  swept the country that night.  Had that happened, the resulting trauma and turmoil surely would have led to many deaths and serious injuries.

But newspaper reports were notably silent on extensive casualties.

No deaths were attributed to the War of the Worlds broadcast. And as Michael J. Socolow wrote in his fine essay about the program, no suicides could “be traced to the broadcast,” either.

WJC

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Pew: Woodward, Bernstein ‘unraveled Watergate cover-up’

In Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on October 1, 2010 at 8:27 am

Bob  Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, was the single most-discussed topic in news links posted at Web logs Monday through Friday last week,  the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said yesterday.

Woodward (Library of Congress)

Pew said that 35 percent of news links at blogs during the period September 20-24 were about the book, which has received mostly so-so reviews. (For example, the Wall Street Journal said in its critique yesterday, “To read ‘Obama’s Wars’ is to feel trapped in a daylong meeting in an airless room. That’s because much of the book consists of a near-verbatim account of meetings—specifically the National Security Council meetings last fall where the administration hashed out its Afghanistan policy.”)

The book and blog posts about it are of mild interest to Media Myth Alert.

What caught this blog’s attention was assertion in Pew’s news release–duplicated in a separate release by the Project for Excellence in Journalism–that referred to Woodward as “a Washington Post associate editor and half of the famous reporting duo that unraveled the Watergate cover-up.”

That last bit, about having “unraveled the Watergate cover-up,” is in error.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my new book that debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths, Woodward and his Post colleague Carl Bernstein, “did not uncover defining and decisive elements” of Watergate—including the cover-up of the break-in at offices of the Democratic National Committee, the scandal’s signal crime.

The Watergate cover-up was exposed incrementally in 1973 and 1974 by the combined forces of such subpoena-wielding entities as federal prosecutors, federal grand juries, and U.S. Senate investigators. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to hand over audiotapes of secretly recorded conversations at the White House that unequivocally demonstrated Nixon’s guilty role in the cover-up.

The Supreme Court decision was handed down in July 1974. Nixon resigned soon after.

Woodward and Bernstein’s award-winning reporting on Watergate was published in summer and fall 1972, as the scandal slowly unfolded during the weeks and months following the break-in at Democratic headquarters.

By late October 1972, I note in Getting It Wrong, “the Post’s investigation into Watergate ‘ran out of gas,’ as Barry Sussman, then the newspaper’s city editor, acknowledged.”

Edward Jay Epstein pointed out in his classic essay about the press and Watergate that “it was not because of the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein, but because of the pressures put on the conspirators by Judge John Sirica, the grand jury, and Congressional committees that the cover-up was unraveled.”

Sirica, a federal judge, presided at the trial of the Watergate burglars that ended in guilty pleas in January 1973. Afterward, the judge “made it abundantly clear,” Epstein wrote, that the convicted burglars “could expect long prison sentences unless they cooperated with the investigation” of the Senate select committee on Watergate.

One of the burglars, James McCord, soon wrote to Sirica, saying that “perjury had been committed at the trial and the defendants had been induced by ‘higher-ups’ to remain silent,” Epstein pointed out.

McCord’s letter thus began the unraveling of the Watergate cover-up.

I discuss in Getting It Wrong factors that help account for the tenacity of the “heroic-journalist” interpretation of Watergate–the erroneous notion that the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein brought down Nixon’s corrupt presidency.

“Media myths,” I write, “often emerge from an eagerness to find influence and lasting significance in what journalists do and tend to extend credit where credit is not entirely due.

“The heroic-journalist myth of Watergate is a telling example. The myth holds that the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post brought down Richard Nixon. In reality, the Post and other news organizations were marginal factors in unraveling the Watergate scandal.”

Media myths thus can be self-flattering; they offer heroes like Woodward and Bernstein to a profession that is more used to criticism than applause.

Besides, claiming that Woodward and Bernstein brought down Nixon, or that they “unraveled the Watergate cover-up,” long ago became a ready if misleading way for journalists to distill what was a sprawling scandal.

WJC

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