W. Joseph Campbell

Archive for the ‘Debunking’ Category

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The wide appeal of the bra-burning meme

In Bra-burning, Debunking, Media myths, Newspapers on August 10, 2010 at 11:34 am

I’ve written from time to time about the striking international appeal of media-driven myths, those dubious and improbable tales about the news media that masquerade as factual.

The Times newspaper in South Africa  underscored that appeal the other day in an interesting and amusing commentary titled, “From A to double D: a history of the bra.”

The commentary included a reference to bra-burning, stating:

At the 'Freedom Trash Can,' 1968

“One of the abiding symbols of the feminist movement is the burning of the bra. As a representation of liberation from the oppression of patriarchy, the alleged incineration of the intimate was meant to signify the death of male domination over women’s self-image. …

“In any case, most sources say the bra-burning never really happened.”

My research indicates otherwise, however.

As the commentary noted–and as I discuss in my new book about media-driven myths, Getting It Wrong–the bra-burning trope stems from the women’s liberation protest of the 1968 Miss America Pageant at Atlantic City.

As I write in Getting It Wrong:

“The demonstrators denounced the pageant as a ‘degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie symbol’ that placed ‘women on a pedestal/auction block to compete for male approval,’ and promoted a ‘Madonna Whore image of womanhood.'”

They carried placards declaring: “Up Against the Wall, Miss America,” “Miss America Sells It,” and “Miss America Is a Big Falsie.”A centerpiece of the protest was a burn barrel, which the demonstrators dubbed the “Freedom Trash Can.” Into the “Freedom Trash Can” they tossed items and articles they said repressed and demeaned women–bras, girdles, high-heels, as well as copies of Cosmopolitan and Playboy magazines.

The protest’s organizers have long insisted that nothing was set ablaze that day at Atlantic City. The lead organizer, Robin Morgan, has asserted, for example:

“There were no bras burned. That’s a media myth.”

But in researching Getting It Wrong, I found a long-overlooked, contemporaneous account in the Press of Atlantic City that said “bras, girdles, falsies, curlers, and copies of popular women’s magazines burned in the ‘Freedom Trash Can.’”

The Press article was published September 8, 1968, a day after the protest, and appeared beneath the headline:

“Bra-burners blitz boardwalk.”

Its author, a veteran newspaperman named John Boucher, died in 1973.

As I note in Getting It Wrong, Boucher’s article “did not elaborate about the fire and the articles burning in the Freedom Trash Can, nor did it suggest the fire was all that important. Rather, the article conveyed a sense of astonishment that an event such as the women’s liberation protest could take place near the venue of the pageant.”

Separately, I tracked down and interviewed Jon Katz, who also had covered the Miss America protest for the Press.

Katz said in interviews with me that he recalled that bras and other items were set afire during the demonstration and that they burned briefly.

“I quite clearly remember the ‘Freedom Trash Can,’ and also remember some protestors putting their bras into it along with other articles of clothing, and some Pageant brochures, and setting the can on fire. I am quite certain of this,” Katz said.

The contemporaneous Press article and Katz’s recollections represent, I write, “evidence that bras and other items were set afire, if briefly, at the 1968 Miss America protest in Atlantic City.”

At very least, the accounts offer fresh dimension to the widely appealing legend of bra-burning.

WJC

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<!–[if !mso]> They carried placards declaring: “Up Against the Wall, Miss America,” “Miss America Sells It,” “Miss America Is a Big Falsie,”[i] and “Miss America Goes Down.”

[i] Cited in Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 96.

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‘Getting It Wrong’ plays the Tattered Cover

In Debunking, Furnish the war, Jessica Lynch, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on August 7, 2010 at 7:28 pm

Denver’s well-known Tattered Cover bookstore was the venue last night for a fine discussion about Getting It Wrong, my new book that addresses and debunks 10 prominent, media-driven myths.

At the Tattered Cover

About 60 people attended the book event, at least a few of whom had learned about it in listening to my in-studio interview Friday morning with David Sirota on KKZN, AM 760, Denver’s progressive talk radio station.

At the Tattered Cover, one of the country’s top independent bookstores, I discussed the myths of Watergate, of the “Cronkite Moment,” of William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain, and of the famous War of Worlds radio dramatization of  1938.

Those stories, I noted, are “all well-known—they are often taught in schools, colleges, and universities. They’re all delicious tales about the power of the news media to bring about change, for good or ill.”

And I proceeded to explain why all of them are media-driven myths–dubious and improbable tales about the news media that masquerade as factual. “They can be thought of as the junk food of journalism,” I noted. “Tasty and alluring, perhaps, but in the end, not terribly healthy or nutritious.”

The surprise of the evening came in discussing the mythical “Cronkite Moment,” in which President Lyndon Johnson supposedly realized U.S. policy in Vietnam was doomed, given the on-air assessment by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite that the war was “mired in stalemate.”

Among the reasons the “Cronkite Moment” is a media myth, I said, is that Johnson did not see the Cronkite program on Vietnam when it aired on February 27,  1968.

Johnson was not in Washington; he was not in front of a television set. He was in Austin, Texas, making light-hearted comments at a black-tie birthday party for Governor John Connally, who that day turned 51.

“At about the time Cronkite was intoning his ‘mired in stalemate’ commentary,” I said at the Tattered Cover, “Johnson was at the podium at Connally’s birthday party, saying: ‘Today you are 51, John. That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority.'”

And with that, the audience burst into laughter.

Never before had the line prompted so many laughs. For some reason last night, it did.

The audience was attentive and inquisitive. Questions were raised about the media myth associated with coverage of the Jessica Lynch case and of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which battered the Gulf Coast five years ago this month.

Another question was about the cinema’s capacity to promote and propel media myths. It was a good observation, one that I wished I had emphasized earlier in my talk.

A telling example of the how cinematic can solidify media myths is to be found in the 1976 film All the President’s Men, an adaptation of the book by the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward about their Watergate reporting.

As I write in Getting It Wrong the cinematic version of All the President’s Men “helped ensure the [heroic-journalist] myth would live on by offering a neat, tidy, and vastly simplified account the Watergate scandal, one that allowed viewers to sidestep the scandal’s complexity while engaging in an entertaining storyline.”

I noted in my talk that Bernstein and Woodward did not uncover the defining and decisive elements of the Watergate scandal—the cover-up and the payment of hush money to the burglars arrested at Democratic national headquarters in June 1972, the signal crime of Watergate. Nor did Woodward and Bernstein uncover the existence of the audiotaping system that Nixon had installed in the Oval Office, which proved decisive in forcing the president’s resignation.

The Tattered Cover was a wonderful venue–comfortable, inviting. Its staff is exceptionally courteous and professional, and the hour-and-a-half went by extremely quickly.

WJC

Related:

Photo credit: Ann-Marie C. Regan

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‘Getting It Wrong’ goes on Q-and-A

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, War of the Worlds, Watergate myth on August 4, 2010 at 8:47 am

My interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN’s Q&A program aired Sunday evening and early Monday–and the show looked better on the tube than I thought it would.

The interview was taped two weeks earlier and, afterward, I didn’t feel that it had gone all that well.

But I was mistaken.

Lamb, who is a real gentleman and is supported by a courteous and highly professional staff, led me through a brief discussion of each of the 10 prominent tales about American journalism which I address and debunk in my new book, Getting It Wrong.

We subsequently zeroed in on the myths of Watergate, Murrow-McCarthy, the Cronkite Moment, and the War of the Worlds radio dramatization.

Toward the end of the interview, which lasted nearly an hour, Lamb asked what might be next in my research. Maybe a sequel to Getting It Wrong, I replied, adding that universe of media-driven myths isn’t confined to the 10 addressed in the book.

Lamb

Lamb, who had read Getting It Wrong closely, surprised me a few times with his questions, including his query about this passage in the book’s closing chapter:

“American journalism loves giving prizes—to its own.”

That passage (which is true, of course) was a way of setting up the conclusion to the chapter discussing the highly exaggerated, over-the-top news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which battered New Orleans and the Gulf Coast five years ago this month.

Among the many awards given for reporting about the hurricane was the Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the News. That award, I note in Getting It Wrong, “was initiated in 2001 to recognize journalists who set the record straight on inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading news stories. The Mongerson Prize was administered by Northwestern University and had a five-year run. It never attracted much attention, certainly nothing approaching the prominence of the Murrow Awards or the Pulitzer Prizes.”

The Mongerson Prize was given for the last time in 2006 and the winners that year were Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They were honored for the report they prepared in late September 2005 that examined exaggerated accounts of mayhem in post-Katrina New Orleans.

“Four weeks after the storm,” Thevenot and Russell wrote, “few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of murdered bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines assert that, while anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.”

In announcing the winners, Northwestern said Thevenot and Russell had “exposed the dangers of pack journalism in a difficult reporting environment.”

A telling point.

I write in Getting It Wrong that Katrina’s aftermath “was no high, heroic moment in American journalism. The coverage was in important respects flawed and exaggerated. On crucial details, journalists erred badly, and got it wrong.

“In the days following Katrina’s landfall, news reports described apocalyptic horror that the hurricane supposedly had unleashed. They reported snipers firing at medical personnel. They reported that shots were fired at helicopters, halting evacuations from the Convention Center. They told of bodies being stacked there like cordwood. They reported roving gangs were preying on tourists and terrorizing the occupants of the Superdome, raping and killing. They said children were victims of sexual assault, that one seven-year-old was raped and her throat was slit. They reported that sharks were plying the flooded streets of New Orleans.

“None of those reports was verified or substantiated: No shots fired at rescue helicopters, no child rape victims, no bodies stacked like cordwood, no sharks.”

Thevenot’s candor about the Katrina coverage was refreshing, in measure because he acknowledged that he, too, had gotten it wrong in some of his reporting.

In an article for American Journalism Review titled “Mythmaking in New Orleans,” Thevenot wrote that “in the worst of the storm reporting, tales of violence, rapes, murders and other mayhem were simply stated as fact with no attribution at all.

“I am among those who committed this sin,” he conceded, referring to his description of the Convention Center in New Orleans, where many people dispossessed by the hurricane took refuge, as “a nightly scene of murders, rapes and regular stampedes.”

WJC

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None of those reports was verified or substantiated: No shots fired at rescue helicopters,[i] no child rape victims, no bodies stacked like cordwood, no sharks

[i] See A Failure of Initiative, 169.

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Long reach of the ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking on August 1, 2010 at 8:33 am

The long reach and international appeal of the mythical Cronkite Moment–when in 1968 the words of Walter Cronkite supposedly altered U.S. war policy in Vietnam–is reconfirmed by the anecdote’s appearance today in a Sri Lankan newspaper.

Johnson in Austin

I’ve periodically noted at MediaMythAlert how media-driven myths, those dubious and improbable tales about the American news media, often find application in contexts abroad. The Sri Lanka newspaper, the Nation, invoked the “Cronkite Moment” in a commentary about last week’s WikiLeaks disclosure of military documents about the war in Afghanistan.

The commentary stated:

“When anchor and newsman Walter Cronkite, called the most trusted man in America, reported from Vietnam in 1967 [sic] that the war cannot be won, JFK’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson famously remarked to an aide, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.’

“The WikiLeaks revelations may not have a similar effect on the war in Afghanistan,” the commentary adds, “but it would surely make the task of victory, or even honourable withdrawal, even more difficult for the United States and its coalition partners.”

The Nation commentary certainly is on target about the impact of the WikiLeaks disclosure: Its effect has been notably modest.

But, then, so was the impact of the “Cronkite Moment,” when the CBS anchorman asserted in a special report broadcast February 27, 1968, that the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate.”

As I note in Getting It Wrong, my new book debunking media-driven myths, Cronkite’s assessment about the U.S. predicament in Vietnam was scarcely original or exceptional in early 1968.

The New York Times’ television critic, Jack Gould, noted in a review of the Cronkite’s program that the anchorman’s assessment “did not contain striking revelations” but served instead “to underscore afresh the limitless difficulties lying ahead and the mounting problems attending United States involvement.”

The power of the “Cronkite Moment” flows from its purported effect on Lyndon Johnson who, as the Nation commentary says, supposedly watched the program and as it ended uttered something to the effect of: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.”

A more common version has Johnson saying, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” But the accounts of what the president said vary markedly.

In any case, Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired. The president at the time was in Austin, Texas, making light-hearted comments at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally (see photo, above).

Moreover, I write in Getting It Wrong:

“Even if he later heard—or heard about— Cronkite’s assessment, it was no epiphany for Johnson. Not long after the program, Johnson gave a rousing, lectern-pounding speech in which he urged a ‘total national effort’ to win the war in Vietnam.”

Johnson’s change of heart on Vietnam, I note in Getting It Wrong, “came about through a complex process in which Cronkite’s views counted for little. Among the forces and factors that influenced Johnson’s thinking … was the counsel of an influential and informal coterie of outside advisers known as the ‘Wise Men.’

“They included such foreign policy notables as Dean Acheson, a former secretary of state; McGeorge Bundy, a former National security adviser to Kennedy and Johnson; George Ball, a former under-secretary of state; Douglas Dillon, a former treasury secretary; General Omar Bradley, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Abe Fortas, a U.S. Supreme Court justice and friend of Johnson.

“The ‘Wise Men’ had met in November 1967, and expressed their near-unanimous support for Johnson’s Vietnam policy. They met again, at the request of the White House, in late March 1968.”

Largely, though not unanimously, the “Wise Men,” expressed opposition to escalating the war in Vietnam. And Johnson appeared shaken by the advice.

The counsel of the Wise Men represented a tipping point in Johnson’s deciding to seek“peace in Vietnam through negotiations. And in a speech March 31, 1968, the president announced a limited halt to U.S. aerial bombing of North Vietnam as an inducement to the communist government in Hanoi to enter peace talks.

He also announced then he would not seek reelection to the presidency.

WJC

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A silly season stew: Serving up the Watergate myth

In Debunking, Washington Post, Watergate myth on July 30, 2010 at 9:01 am

The silly season of journalism is upon us, producing a summer stew of media-driven myths.

Take, for example, the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate, one of 10 I address and debunk in my new book, Getting It Wrong.

The notion that the investigative reporting by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought down the corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon is, I write in Getting It Wrong, one of the most cherished stories American journalism tells about itself.

“But,” I further write, “to explain Watergate through the lens of the heroic-journalist is to abridge and misunderstand the scandal and to indulge in a particularly beguiling media-driven myth.”

It is, though, quite a hardy and versatile myth.

It’s sometimes casually asserted, as in a column the other day in a suburban Washington newspaper, the Falls Church (Virginia) News-Press. The column-writer flatly declared the Washington Post “brought down a U.S. president by its Watergate investigations in the early 1970s.”

On other occasions, the Watergate myth is asserted with gusto, as it was yesterday at the online site of the French business newspaper Les Echos, in a feature article about Katharine Graham. She was publisher of the Post during the Watergate period and beyond.

Les Echos declared that the Post “played a capital role in the disclosure of the scandal,” adding that Woodward and Bernstein, “after a meticulous investigation, were able to untangle the mysterious business of wiretappings, which led to the White House.”

Les Echos failed to mention that Graham, herself, insisted the Post did not topple Nixon.

“Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do,” Graham said in 1997, at a program at the Newseum marking the scandal’s twenty-fifth anniversary.

“The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional,” she insisted.

Woodward concurred, albeit in earthier terms: “To say that the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.”

Nearly 20 men associated with Nixon’s White House or his 1972 reelection campaign were convicted of Watergate-related crimes and served time in jail. Nixon resigned in August 1974 to avoid certain impeachment.

As I write in Getting It Wrong:

“To roll up a scandal of such dimension required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.”

Even then, I argue, Nixon likely would have served out his term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House. The Supreme Court in July 1974 ordered Nixon to surrender the tapes subpoenaed by the special Watergate prosecutor; the recording of June 23, 1972, captured Nixon plotting the cover-up.

Amid the tableau of prosecutors, courts, federal investigations, congressional panels, and the Supreme Court, the contributions of Woodward and Bernstein were modest.

And certainly not decisive.

WJC

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Twenty-one men associated with the presidency of Richard M. Nixon or his reelection campaign in 1972 were convicted of Watergate-related crimes, nineteen of whom went to prison.[i] Nixon himself resigned in August 1974, less than halfway through his second term, to avoid certain impeachment and conviction. By then it had become clear that Nixon had ordered senior aides to cover up the scandal’s signal crime, the burglary in June 1972 at the national headquarters of the rival Democratic Party at the Watergate office-apartment complex in Washington, D.C.

To roll up a scandal of such dimension required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI. Even then, Nixon likely would have served out his term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House. Only when compelled by the Supreme Court did Nixon surrender those recordings, which captured him plotting the cover-up and authorizing payments of thousands of dollars in hush money.

[i] See Harry F. Rosenthal, no headline, Associated Press (22 June 197). Retrieved from LexisNexis database.

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WikiLeaks disclosure no ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on July 27, 2010 at 9:39 am

The WikiLeaks disclosure of thousands of secret military documents about the war in Afghanistan has been likened–erroneously–to the mythical “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite declared the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”

Cronkite

A commentary posted today at the Huffington Post is among the latest to make the dubious connection. The commentary said Cronkite’s “assessment of the war is often credited as the turning point for American public opinion, moving opposition to the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam into the mainstream. Reportedly, upon hearing this commentary, President Lyndon Johnson said, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.’

“I can’t help wonder if the release of the Afghan War Logs by WikiLeaks is our Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. In fact, when I consider the totality of the recent news on our efforts in Afghanistan, I can’t reach any other conclusion than that if Cronkite was still alive, he would say we have.”

Given that the WikiLeaks documents contain little that was previously unknown about the conflict, disclosure is unlikely to amount to the “Cronkite moment for Afghanistan.”

More important, the “Cronkite Moment” wasn’t very decisive at all.

It really wasn’t much of a “moment.”

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my new book about media-driven myths, Cronkite himself disputed the notion that his assessment about Vietnam had had much effect on Johnson or on U.S. war policy. For example, in promoting his memoir in 1997, Cronkite likened his “mired in stalemate” commentary to a straw on the back of a crippled camel.

He repeated the analogy in 1999, stating in an interview with CNN: “I think our broadcast simply was another straw on the back of a crippled camel.”

Only late in his life did Cronkite embrace the presumptive power of the so-called “Cronkite Moment,” telling Esquire in 2006: “To be honest, I was rather amazed that my reporting from Vietnam had such an effect on history.”

As I further discuss in Getting It Wrong, President Johnson did not see Cronkite’s show when it aired February 27, 1968, and therefore “did not have–could not have had–the abrupt yet resigned reaction that so often has been attributed to him.”

At the time Cronkite intoned his “mired in stalemate” assessment, Johnson was in Austin, Texas, offering light-hearted remarks at the birthday party for Texas Governor John Connally, a longtime political ally.

“Today you are 51, John,” the president said. “That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority. Throughout the years we have worked long and hard—and I might say late—trying to maintain it, too.”

Even if Johnson later saw the Cronkite program on videotape, he “gave no indication of having taken the anchorman’s message to heart,” I write in Getting It Wrong.

Not long after Cronkite’s program, Johnson delivered a rousing speech in Minneapolis, in which he urged “a total national effort” to win the war in Vietnam. That speech was given March 18, 1968, and in it, the president declared:

“We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing worse than surrender and cowardice.”

Johnson’s aggressive remarks are quite difficult to square with his supposedly downcast, self-pitying reaction to the supposed “Cronkite Moment.”

Moreover, as I discussed yesterday at MediaMythAlert, public opinion polls show that Americans’ views about the war had begun to shift in 1967, months before the “Cronkite Moment.”

WJC

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Mangling the ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, New York Times on July 26, 2010 at 6:38 pm

I’m amazed how international news media love to indulge in, and inevitably mangle, some of American journalism’s best-known media myths.

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

Take, for example, a post today at a blog sponsored by the the London Guardian newspaper.

The blog post invoked the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of February 27, 1968, when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite’s report on the Vietnam War supposedly swung public opinion against the conflict.

The post read, in part:

“Cronkite, who died just recently, was America’s most authoritative TV newsman. In February 1968, when he told America after spending some time in Vietnam that the war wasn’t winnable, public support for the war went through the floor.”

Let’s unpack that.

First, Cronkite died not “recently,” but in July 2009.

Second, Cronkite did not say in his special report on Vietnam that the war “wasn’t winnable.” He said the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate” and suggested that negotiations with the communist North Vietnamese eventually might prove to be a way out for the United States.

Third, American public opinion did not go “through the floor” because of Cronkite’s on-air assessment.

Far from it.

Public opinion polls as well as anecdotal evidence indicate that Americans’ views about the war had begun to shift in 1967, months before the “Cronkite Moment.”

As I note in Getting It Wrong, my new book debunking prominent media-driven myths, by October 1967, a plurality of Americans (47 percent) maintained that sending U.S. forces to Vietnam had been a mistake, according to Gallup surveys.

In a Gallup poll completed in early February 1968, three weeks before the Cronkite program, the proportion saying entering the war was a mistake stood at 46 percent; 42 percent said it had not been a mistake.

Gallup asked the question again in a poll completed the day the Cronkite program aired, finding that 49 percent of the respondents said U.S. military intervention in Vietnam had been a mistake; 42 percent said it had not.

In April 1968, after Cronkite’s program, Gallup reported that 48 percent of Americans thought sending U.S. troops to Vietnam had been a mistake; 40 percent disagreed.

Moreover, as I write in Getting It Wrong:

“Journalists also had detected a softening in support of the war. In December 1967, for example, Don Oberdorfer, then a national correspondent for the Knight newspapers, noted that the ‘summer and fall of 1967 [had] been a time of switching, when millions of American voters—along with many religious leaders, editorial writers and elected officials—appeared to be changing their views about the war.'”

And I point out in Getting It Wrong that in early 1968, Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment was neither notable nor extraordinary.

“Leading American journalists and news organizations had … weighed in with pessimistic assessments about the war long before Cronkite’s special report on Vietnam,” I write, adding that Mark Kurlansky, in his year-study about the events of 1968, wrote that Cronkite’s view was “hardly a radical position” for the time.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial four days before Cronkite’s special report that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam “may be doomed” and that “everyone had better be prepared for the bitter taste of defeat beyond America’s power to prevent.”

And nearly seven months before Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment, New York Times correspondent R.W. Apple Jr. had cited “disinterested observers” in reporting that the war in Vietnam “is not going well.”

Apple’s report appeared on the front page of the Times, beneath the headline:

“Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.”

WJC

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What was decisive in Watergate’s outcome?

In Anniversaries, Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on July 25, 2010 at 1:34 pm

“Without the Watergate hearings, surely Nixon would have escaped judgment.”

So wrote Jeff Stein the other day, at his “Spy Talk” blog, for which the Washington Post is host.

While Stein didn’t focus his commentary on Watergate and the factors accounting for Richard Nixon’s fall, his observation invites reflection about what ultimately ended Nixon’s corrupt presidency.

Were the Watergate hearings–those of the Senate Select Committee on Watergate–indeed pivotal, as Stein suggests? What were the other factors?

I note in Getting It Wrong, my new book about prominent media-driven myths, that the dominant popular narrative of Watergate has long been the notion that dogged investigative reporting of two Washington Post journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, was what exposed the crimes of Watergate and brought down Nixon.

“How the Post and its reporters uncovered Watergate is deeply ingrained in American journalism as one of the field’s most important and self-reverential stories,” I write in Getting It Wrong, adding:

“But to explain Watergate through the lens of the heroic-journalist is to abridge and misunderstand the scandal and to indulge in a particularly beguiling media-driven myth. The heroic-journalist interpretation minimizes the far more decisive forces that unraveled the scandal and forced Nixon from office.”

Among the more decisive forces and factors were hearings of the Senate Select Committee in the summer 1973–the “Watergate hearings,” to which Stein refers.

The hearings were most memorable for the stunning disclosure that Nixon had secretly and routinely tape-recorded conversations in the Oval Office.

The disclosure was to prove decisive to Watergate’s outcome. It set off intensive efforts by the special federal prosecutor on Watergate, as well as other subpoena-wielding authorities, to gain access to tapes relevant to their inquiries.

Citing “executive privilege,” Nixon resisted releasing them until ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court–in an 8-0 decision handed down 36 years ago yesterday, July 24, 1974. He complied.

One of the recordings revealed Nixon’s active role in attempting to cover up the signal crime of Watergate, the break-in in June 1972 at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. That recording–the so-called “smoking gun” tape–made resignation inevitable.

The “smoking gun” tape showed that Nixon “had instituted a cover-up and thus had participated in an obstruction of justice almost from the outset” of the scandal, Stanley I. Kutler, Watergate’s foremost historian, wrote in his fine book, The Wars of Watergate.

If not for the Supreme Court’s order, it is my view that Nixon never would have released the tapes revealing his guilt in Watergate and likely would have served out his term, albeit as a badly wounded chief executive.

Interestingly, as I note in Getting It Wrong, Woodward and Bernstein wrote in All the President’s Men, the book about their Watergate reporting, that they received a lead about the Oval Office tapes shortly before their existence was revealed.

Woodward said he called Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee about the tip; Bradlee suggested not expending energy in pursuing it.

Had they pursued the tip, Woodward and Bernstein might have broken the pivotal story about Watergate. Had they done so, the heroic-journalist interpretation of Watergate–the media-centric view that they uncovered the scandal–would be somewhat more plausible.

WJC

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Silly season arrives? ‘Furnish the war’ sightings suggest as much

In 1897, Debunking, Furnish the war, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on July 24, 2010 at 10:01 am

It must be the onset of summer’s silly season, the period from mid-July to the end of August when news content becomes noticeably lighter and fluff-filled.

How else to explain the recent sightings in the news, in the United States and abroad, of William Randolph Hearst’s mythical vow to “furnish the war” with Spain?

The purported Hearstian vow–which, as I describe in Chapter One of my new book, Getting It Wrong, is surely a media myth–appeared yesterday in a breezy travel piece posted at the Christian Science Monitor‘s online site.

The writer, Ruth Walker, tells of a recent cross-country road trip during which she turned often to Tippecanoe and Tyler Too: Famous Slogans and Catchphrases in American History, a 2008 book by Jan R. Van Meter.

The book, Walker writes, “is essentially a retelling of various chapters of American history through the catchphrases and slogans that emerged from them.”

She notes that a visit to the Hearst Castle in California “recalled William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper publisher who called for war with Spain after the USS Maine sank mysteriously in Havana Harbor.”

A memorable Hearstian line, Walker writes, was his “instruction to the artist Frederic Remington, whom he had sent to Cuba to ‘cover,’ as an illustrator, the anticipated war: ‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.'”

As is discussed in Getting It Wrong, reasons for doubting the veracity of the anecdote are many and include the significant fact that the purported telegram containing Hearst’s “furnish the war” vow has never surfaced.

Hearst, moreover, denied having sent such a message, and Remington apparently never discussed such an exchange.

Additionally, Hearst’s purported message is incongruous and illogical on its face: It would have made no sense for Hearst to have pledged to “furnish the war” because war–the Cuban rebellion against Spanish rule–was the reason he assigned Remington to Cuba in the first place.

The artist was on the island for six days in January 1897–15 months before the start of the Spanish-American War. The war was not “anticipated” in early 1897.

I further note in Getting It Wrong that Remington’s work from Cuba impugns the anecdote, too. His sketches for Hearst’s New York Journal depicted unmistakable (if unremarkable) scenes of the rebellion, which had begun in 1895.

Remington’s work for the Journal showed a scouting party of Spanish cavalry with rifles at the ready; a cluster of Cuban non-combatant captives being herded into Spanish lines; a scruffy Cuban rebel kneeling to fire at a small Spanish fort, and a knot of Spanish soldiers dressing a comrade’s wounded leg.

The sketches appeared in the Journal beneath headlines such as “Cuban War Sketches Gathered in the Field by Frederic Remington” and “Frederic Remington Sketches A Familiar Incident of the Cuban War.”

Remington clearly had seen many signs of war in Cuba.

For those and other reasons, the anecdote about Hearst’s vow is assuredly a media-driven myth, a dubious and improbable tale that deserves relegation to the closet of historical imprecision.

And that closet need not be opened at any time of year, not even during summer’s silly season when indulgence in the lighter side of the news becomes conspicuous.

WJC

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Invoking media myths to score points

In 1897, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on July 23, 2010 at 8:25 am

Media-driven myths, those improbable tales about the news media that masquerade as factual, endure for a number of reasons–not the least of which is their value in scoring points about contemporary American journalism.

Evidence of that impulse appears today in a commentary posted at the Moderate Voice blog. The commentary assails conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart as a latter-day practitioner of “yellow journalism” and invokes what are media myths in making that claim.

“At the turn of the 19th century,” the commentary says, “Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst ‘created a frenzy’ among the U.S. citizenry that pushed us into the Spanish-American War. Historians accuse Hearst of trying to boost his circulation by advocating war.”

In support of that dubious claim–most historians scoff at the notion that Pulitzer and Hearst “pushed us into” war with Spain–the Moderate Voice commentary offers the hoary tale of Hearst’s purported vow, supposedly contained in a telegram to the artist Frederic Remington, that stated:

“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

Well, where to begin in unpacking the errors in such sweeping claims?

For starters, Hearst and Pulitzer were prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, not at “the turn of the 19th century.”

More significant, there is little evidence that the newspapers of Hearst and Pulitzer–the New York Journal and New York World, specifically–“created a frenzy” in the run-up to the Spanish-American War in 1898.

As I wrote in my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, Hearst and Pulitzer exerted no more than limited agenda-setting influence on the U.S. press in the run-up to the war.

As I noted in Yellow Journalism:

“A significant body of research indicates that newspapers in small-town and rural America scoffed at, condemned, and ignored the exaggerated and fanciful reports appearing in New York City’s yellow journals before and after the Maine’s destruction” in Havana harbor in mid-February 1898.

The mysterious destruction of the battleship U.S.S. Maine killed more than 260 Navy sailors and officers, and helped propel the war with Spain.

Moreover, I noted, “claims that the yellow press fomented the Spanish-American War contain almost no discussion about how, specifically, that influence was brought to bear” inside the administration of President William McKinley.

“There is,” I wrote in Yellow Journalism, “almost no evidence that the content of the yellow press, especially during the decisive weeks following the Maine’s destruction, shaped the thinking, influenced the policy formulation, or informed the conduct of key White House officials.”

The pithy “furnish the war” vow is almost certainly apocryphal, as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my new book debunking 10 media-driven myths.

I note in Getting It Wrong that the purported vow has gained “unique status as an adaptable, hardy, all-purpose anecdote, useful in illustrating any number of media sins and shortcomings.

“It has been invoked to illustrate the media’s willingness to compromise impartiality, promote political agendas, and indulge in sensationalism.” The Moderate Voice commentary accomplishes all three.

I further note in Getting It Wrong that the tale about Hearst’s vow lives on “despite a nearly complete absence of supporting documentation. It lives on even though the telegram that supposedly contained Hearst’s vow has never turned up. It lives on even though Hearst denied ever sending such a message.”

Additionally, the tale endures in the face of what I call “an irreconcilable internal inconsistency.” It would have been illogical and absurd for Hearst to vow to “furnish the war” because war—specifically, the islandwide Cuban rebellion against Spain’s colonial rule—was the very reason Hearst sent Remington to Cuba in the first place.

Remington was in Cuba in early 1897, at a time when anyone reading U.S. newspapers would have been well aware that Cuba was a theater of a nasty war. By then, Spain had sent nearly 200,000 soldiers in a failed attempt to put down the rebellion, which gave rise in April 1898 to the Spanish-American War.

WJC

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