W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘1897’

, , , , , , , ,

As inevitable as ‘Yes, Virginia,’ at the holidays

In 1897, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, New York Sun, New York Times, Newspapers, Year studies, Yellow Journalism on December 15, 2010 at 8:59 am

The approach of the year-end holidays brings inevitable reference to American  journalism’s most famous editorial, “Is There A Santa Claus?”

Virginia O'Hanlon

The lyrical and timeless tribute to childhood and the Christmas spirit was first published in 1897 in the old New York Sun, in response to the inquiry of an 8-year-old girl, Virginia O’Hanlon.

“Please tell me the truth,” she implored, “is there a Santa Claus?”

The Sun in reply was reassuring:

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”

Almost as inevitable as the editorial’s reappearance this time of year are sightings of myths and misconceptions associated with “Is There A Santa Claus?”

Today, for example, an online reference site for journalists, Followthemedia.com, says in an essay that “Is There a Santa Claus?” was published on the front page of the Sun, on September 21, 1897.

The date is correct. But the famous editorial was given obscure placement in its debut. As I wrote in my 2006 book, The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms:

“‘Is There a Santa Claus?’ appeared inconspicuously in the third of three columns of editorials in the New York Sun on 21 September 1987. It was subordinate to seven other commentaries that day, on such matters as ‘British Ships in American Waters,’ the ambiguities in Connecticut’s election law, and the features of the chainless bicycle anticipated in 1898.”

“Is There A Santa Claus” appeared on page six, the editorial page of the Sun.

Interestingly, the oddly timed editorial about Santa Claus–appearing as it did more than three months before Christmas–prompted no comment from the many newspaper rivals to the Sun.

That’s somewhat curious because the New York City press of the late 19th century was prone–indeed, eager–to comment on, and disparage, the content of their rivals.  That’s how the enduring sneer “yellow journalism” was coined, in early 1897.

In its headline today, Followthemedia suggests the editorial’s most-quoted passage — “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” — are the words most famous in American journalism.

Maybe.

But a stronger case can be made for  the New York Times logo, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” which in 1897 took a permanent place in the upper left corner of the newspaper’s front page, a spot known in journalism as the “left ear.”

As I noted in a blog post nearly a year ago: “The ‘Yes, Virginia,’ passage is invoked so often, and in so many contexts, that no longer is it readily associated with American journalism. ‘Yes, Virginia,’ long ago became unmoored from its original context, the third of three columns of editorials in the New York Sun on September 21, 1897.”

I also suggested then that the famous vow attributed to William Randolph Hearst–“You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war“–may be more famous in journalism than “Yes, Virginia.”

The Hearstian vow, as I write in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, is almost certainly apocryphal. But like many media-driven myths, it lives on as an anecdote too delicious not to be true.

What is striking and perhaps exceptional about “Is There A Santa Claus?” is its timeless appeal–how generations of readers have found solace, joy, and inspiration in its passages.

A letter-writer to the Sun in 1914 said, for example: “Though I am getting old,” the editorial’s “thoughts and expressions fill my heart with overflowing joy.”

In 1926, a letter-writer told the Sun that “Is There A Santa Claus?” offered “fine relief from the commercialism and unsentimental greed” of the Christmas season.

In 1940, a writer to the Sun likened the editorial to “a ray of hope on the path to human understanding in our troubled times.”

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , ,

Saturday at Newseum: Telling the back story to ‘Yes, Virginia’

In 1897, Media myths, New York Sun, Newspapers, Year studies on December 10, 2010 at 4:44 pm

I’ll be discussing American journalism’s best-known, most-reprinted editorial at a program tomorrow afternoon at the Newseum, the $450 million museum of news on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

The editorial is, of course, the timeless tribute to childhood and the Christmas spirit that ran 113 years ago in the old New York Sun beneath the headline, “Is There A Santa Claus?”

I’ll be speaking about the back story to the classic editorial at 3:30 p.m. in the Newseum’s Knight studio, near the close of what is billed as “‘Yes, Virginia,’ Family Day.” The essay often is referred to as “Yes, Virginia,” owing to its most famous passage–“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

As I note in my 2006 book, The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms, the editorial was rather obscure and inconspicuous in its first appearance.  “Is There A Santa Claus?” was published in the third of three columns of tightly packed commentaries on topics that ranged from the ambiguities in Connecticut’s election law to the features of the chainless bicycle anticipated in 1898.

The editorial’s timing was odd and incongruous, too. “Is There A Santa Claus?” first appeared in the Sun on September 21, 1897–more than three months before Christmas.

As I write in The Year That Defined American Journalism, the best explanation for the puzzling timing “lies in the excited speculation of a little girl who, after celebrating her birthday in mid-summer, began to wonder about the gifts she would receive at Christmas.”

The little girl was Virginia O’Hanlon who, in her excited speculation, wrote to the Sun, saying:

“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. … Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”

Virginia O'Hanlon

As she recalled years later, the letter was sent soon after her 8th birthday in July 1897. But the editorial reply in the Sun didn’t appear until more than two months had passed.

“After writing to the Sun,” she told an audience in 1959, “I looked every day for the simple answer I expected. When it didn’t appear, I got disappointed and forgot about it.”

Apparently, the Sun had misplaced or overlooked her letter. It eventually turned up on the desk of Edward P. Mitchell, the editorial page editor, who asked Francis P. Church to craft a reply.

Years later, Mitchell wrote that Church, a retiring, taciturn journalist, “bristled and pooh-poohed” at the request but finally “took the letter and turned with an air of resignation to his desk” to write.

It took Church less than a day to draft the editorial that would ensure him enduring posthumous fame. (His authorship wasn’t disclosed by the Sun until shortly after his death in 1906.)

“Virginia,” Church wrote in the editorial, “your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.”

After ruminating about the dimensions of human imagination, Church opened a new paragraph and wrote the editorial’s most memorable passages:

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.”

It sometimes is claimed that “Is There A Santa Claus?” was an instant sensation. In fact, it attracted no immediate attention. As I write in The Year That Defined American Journalism:

“Although it was published at a time when newspaper editors routinely commented on—and often disparaged—the work and content of their rivals, the oddly timed editorial prompted no comment from the Sun’s rivals in New York City.”

But “readers noted it and found it memorable,” I add. “In untold numbers over the years, readers asked the Sun to reprint the essay.” While it took years, the newspaper grudgingly acquiesced.

From 1924 until the newspaper’s last Christmas before folding in 1950, “Is There A Santa Claus?” was the lead editorial in the Sun on December 23 or 24.

“Ultimately,” I note, “the newspaper gave in—tacitly acknowledging that editors are not always as perceptive as their readers in identifying journalism of significance and lasting value.”

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , , , , , , , ,

‘Getting It Wrong’ among 90 titles at NPC Book Fair

In 1897, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Hurricane Katrina, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Newspapers, Washington Post, Watergate myth, Year studies on November 8, 2010 at 11:55 am

I will be among more than 90 authors signing and selling their recent books tomorrow evening at the annual National Press Club Book Fair and Authors’ Night.

My latest book, Getting It Wrong, will be among the titles at the Press Club event.

The book fair this year brings together a variety of authors, including one of my favorite journalism historians, Maurine Beasley of the University of Maryland; Jack Fuller, author of What Is Happening To News, and Chesley (“Sully”) Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a stricken passenger airliner on the Hudson River in January 2009.

The Book Fair is a fine occasion. I attended the event in 2006 and had a great time. My book at that event was The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms.

Getting It Wrong, which came out during the summer, addresses and debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths. These are stories about and/or by the news media that widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.

I liken them to the “junk food” of journalism–delicious and appealing, perhaps, but not terribly healthy or nutritious.

The myths debunked in Getting It Wrong include some of the most cherished stories American journalism tells about itself, including:

“Because it takes on some of the most treasured stories in American journalism,” I write in the introduction to Getting It Wrong, the book “is a work with a provocative edge. It could not be otherwise.”

I further write that Getting It Wrong “aligns itself with a central objective of newsgathering—that of seeking to get it right, of setting straight the record by offering searching reappraisals of some of the best-known stories journalism tells about itself.

“Given that truth-seeking is such a widely shared and animating value in American journalism,” I add, “it is a bit odd that so little effort has been made over the years to revisit, scrutinize, and verify these stories. But then, journalism seldom is seriously introspective, or very mindful of its history. It usually proceeds with little more than a nod to its past.”

I point out that media myths take hold for a variety of reasons: Because they delicious stories that are almost too good not to be true; because they are reductive in offering simplistic interpretations of complex historical events, and because they are self-flattering in that they place journalists at the decisive center of important developments.

The Book Fair opens at 5:30 p.m. Admission is free for members, and $5 for non-members.

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , , , ,

Getting it right about Hearst, his newspapers, and war

In Debunking, Media myths, Newspapers, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on October 27, 2010 at 7:30 am

It’s rather remarkable how William Randolph Hearst, the timeless bogeyman of American journalism, serves so readily as an exemplar of how awful the news media can be.

Hearst

Hearst and his newspapers, for example, are often blamed for having fomented the war with Spain over Cuba in 1898. They didn’t.

He’s also accused of having vowed to “furnish the war,” in an incendiary telegram to the artist Frederic Remington in 1897. I debunk that popular but thinly documented tale  in my new mythbusting book, Getting It Wrong.

A column yesterday in the Philadelphia Inquirer offered another charge against Hearst’s character and journalism. He was accused of having played on anti-Catholic sentiment to whip up popular sentiment against Spain at the end of the 19th century.

Here’s what the column said:

“Fox News and [Fox talk show host Bill] O’Reilly have been the leading TV gathering point for anti-Muslim sentiment following the attack on New York’s World Trade Center, most recently providing viewers with a rallying point against the so-called ground zero mosque.

“This sort of journalism is even older than what some people characterize as political correctness and others call public respect for minorities. In 1890, William Randolph Hearst helped boost profits for his New York Journal newspaper, stirring public sentiment to start the Spanish-American War, by exploiting antipathy for the Roman Catholic Spanish Empire.”

Let’s see: In 1890 Hearst wasn’t even in New York; he was in San Francisco, running the Examiner newspaper. He didn’t take control of the New York Journal until 1895.

And war was not profitable for Hearst’s newspapers .

As I wrote in my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, the Spanish-American War in 1898 generally boosted newspaper circulation. But advertising revenues fell, as advertisers feared the conflict would undercut a halting recovery from hard economic times of the 1890s.

Moreover, newsprint costs soared, as did news-gathering expenditures.

In 1899, the trade journal Fourth Estate estimated that Hearst’s New York Journal had spent $50,000 a week—the equivalent these days of more than $1 million—on cable tolls, reporters’ salaries, and dispatch boats that ferried correspondents’ reports from the war’s principal theater in Cuba to Jamaica and elsewhere for transmission to New York.

Hearst’s Journal scoffed at claims that it helped bring on the war as part of a cynical scheme to build circulation and boost profits.

Hearst's Evening Journal

“Would you like to know what effect the war had on the money-making feature of this particular newspaper? The wholesale price of paper was greatly increased. Advertising diminished, expenses increased enormously,” the Journal said, adding that its expenses related to covering the conflict exceeded $750,000—the equivalent these days of more than $20 million.

Close reading of the Journal in the run-up to the Spanish-American War makes it clear that Catholicism wasn’t much of a preoccupation for the newspaper. The Cubans, after all, were overwhelmingly Catholic, too, and the Journal sided unequivocally with their bid for political self-rule.

The human rights disaster that took hold in Cuba by 1898 was far more important to the Journal and to other newspapers in New York than “antipathy” to Spain’s Catholicism.

Spain, in a clumsy attempt to put down an island-wide rebellion against its colonial governance, forced thousands of Cubans, mostly old men, women, and children, into garrison towns where they could offer neither support nor supplies to the rebels, who controlled much of the countryside.

This policy was called “reconcentration,” and it gave rise to widespread malnutrition and disease: Unknown tens of thousands of Cuban non-combatants died from starvation and illness.

The human rights disaster on Cuba “inevitably stirred outrage and condemnation in the United States,” I wrote in Yellow Journalism . And conditions on Cuba were a frequent topic of reporting in the Journal and other newspapers.

A leading historian of that period, Ivan Musicant, has quite correctly observed that the reconcentration policy “did more to bring on the Spanish-American War than anything else the Spanish could have done.”

Hearst’s newspapers reported about, but certainly did not create, the devastating effects of Spain’s ill-considered and destructive policy.

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , , , , , ,

IBD invokes Hearst myth of ‘furnish the war’

In 1897, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on October 21, 2010 at 5:19 pm

Remington, Davis in Cuba

In Getting It Wrong, my new mythbusting book, I point out that the most resilient media-driven myths often are those that are distilled “to a catchy, pithy phrase.”

A telling case in point is the line often attributed to William Randolph Hearst: “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” He supposedly was referring to war with Spain in the late 19th century.

Testimony to the tenacity of Hearst’s reputed comment–which I address and debunk in Getting It Wrong–appeared the other day in a commentary in Investor’s Business Daily. The commentary asserted:

“The media have a history of offering more heat than light on many issues. Recall publisher William Randolph Hearst’s telegram to a photographer on assignment to document the supposed conflict in Cuba in 1897: ‘You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.'”

Let’s unpack that error-fraught paragraph.

For starters, the story goes that Hearst purportedly sent the telegram to Frederic Remington, a prominent artist (not a photographer), who arrived in Cuba in January 1897 on assignment for Hearst’s New York Journal (see image, above).

Remington was sent there to illustrate the island-wide rebellion against Spanish colonial rule. The artist later recalled that at the time of his brief visit, the Cuban countryside “was a pall of smoke” from homes of Cubans that had been set afire.

Davis

Remington traveled to Cuba with Richard Harding Davis, a prominent writer and correspondent. Davis’ correspondence from that time stated flatly: “There is war here and no mistake.”

So a “supposed conflict” the rebellion was not. In fact, the Cuban rebellion gave rise in 1898 to the Spanish-American War.

As I also point out in Getting It Wrong, the “furnish the war” anecdote lives on despite a nearly complete absence of supporting documentation.

“It lives on,” I write, “even though telegrams supposedly exchanged by Remington and Hearst have never turned up.

“It lives on even though Hearst denied ever sending such a message.”

Moreover, I write, the myth “lives on despite an irreconcilable internal inconsistency: It would have been absurd for Hearst to vow to ‘furnish the war’ because war—specifically, the Cuban rebellion against Spain’s colonial rule—was the very reason Hearst sent Remington to Cuba in the first place.”

A further reason for doubting that Hearst sent such a message is that Spanish authorities closely controlled cable traffic into and out of Cuba. They surely would have intercepted–and would have called attention to–such an inflammatory message, had it been sent.

Despite those and other factors, the Remington-Hearst anecdote is a media myth that refuses to die. One reason for its tenacity, I point out in Getting It Wrong, is that the tale “has achieved 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. It has been used, more broadly, to suggest the media’s capacity to inject malign influence into international affairs.”

Like many media-driven myths, the “furnish the war” anecdote is succinct, savory, and easily remembered. It is indeed “a catchy, pithy phrase,” one almost too good not to be true.

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , , ,

Was ‘jailbreaking journalism’ a hoax? Evidence points the other way

In 1897, Anniversaries, Debunking, Media myths, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on October 15, 2010 at 6:42 am

The sensational case of “jail-breaking journalism” reached a conclusion 113 years ago this week, when the passenger steamer Seneca reached in New York harbor, en route from Havana.

Among the passengers was 19-year-old Evangelina Cisneros, a petite Cuban woman who, a few days before, had been the world’s most famous political prisoner.

She had been broken out of jail in Havana in the early hours of October 7, 1897. Her rescuers included Karl Decker, a reporter for William Randolph Hearst‘s New York Journal who had been assigned to Havana to secure her freedom.

Once out of jail, Cisneros was hidden at the home of a bachelor Cuban banker for nearly three days. She was smuggled aboard the Seneca just before it left Havana.

The steamer reached New York on October 13, 1897, and the Journal lodged Cisneros in a palatial room at the Waldorf Hotel. Four days later, she and Decker were feted at Madison Square, at a thunderous outdoor reception organized by Hearst.

More than 75,000 people turned out at what was reported to have been the largest public gathering in New York since the Civil War.

I wrote about the case of “jail-breaking journalism” in my 2006 book, The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms, noting:

“Cisneros was rapturously received [in New York] 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.”

At the time, Cuba was in open rebellion against Spanish colonial rule, and Evangelina had been swept up in the tumult on the island. She was accused of plotting to kill a senior Spanish military officer; she said she was defending herself from the officer’s sexual advances.

To the Journal, her jailing stood as irrefutable evidence of Spain’s routine mistreatment of Cuban women. Cisneros, the Journal said, was guilty only of “having in her veins the best blood in Cuba.”

As that claim suggests, the Journal devoted impassioned and intensive coverage to Cisneros’ plight, turning her jailing into an international cause célèbre.

By the time of her escape, Cisneros had been in Spanish custody nearly 15 months without trial.

The jailbreak was breathtakingly illegal–and one of the most astonishing episodes in American journalism. The Journal declared it “epochal,” a stunning success of its activist brand of yellow journalism.

But the case long has been dogged by suspicions that the whole thing was a hoax, that Decker paid bribes to win Cisneros’ release and then concocted an elaborate tale about a jailbreak.

Such suspicions emerged almost as soon as Cisneros reached New York.  As I note in The Year That Defined American Journalism, Hearst’s leading rival newspaper, the New York World of Joseph Pulitzer, was particularly eager to denounce the Cisneros rescue as fraudulent.

“Gold did it,” the World declared. “The Spanish could not withstand its glitter. It oiled the palms of turnkeys and guards, of officers and civilians. Miss Cisneros’s friends had it a-plenty. And so she got out of her cell while her jailers looked the other way.”

But as I note in The Year That Defined American Journalism, such claims “have never been supported by any direct evidence. No one has identified to whom bribes were paid, how much, by what method, and how the purported payoffs secured the enduring silence of the authorities.”

Besides, a conspiracy of silence that included senior Spanish authorities in Cuba would have had to have been so improbably extensive—so many people would have known—that “concealment could not possibly have lasted for long, certainly not 100 years and more,” I wrote.

Allegations or suspicions of bribery, I noted, “rest more on assertion—and newspaper rivals’ contempt for the Journal—than on specific, persuasive documentation. They are supported more by argument than evidence.”

Decker–who denied that bribes had been paid–succeeded in the jailbreak because he tapped into a clandestine network in Havana, the operatives of which had become adept in smuggling arms, ammunition, and medicine into Cuba and, occasionally, people out.

Among those operatives was Carlos F. Carbonell, a bachelor banker in whose home Cisneros was hidden. They also included William B. MacDonald, an American national in Havana who was the agent for a steamship line. He was with Decker when the jailbreak took place.

It is simply implausible that Carbonell, MacDonald, and Decker’s other accomplices would have taken the risks they took had the Cisneros rescue been nothing more than hoax, farce, or sham.

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , , , , ,

Hearst, agenda-setting, and war

In Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on October 12, 2010 at 9:26 am

William Randolph Hearst is the bogeyman of American journalism, a timeless representation of what’s malign and dubious about the news media.

HearstAt their worst, the media can even force a country into war–just as Hearst did with his sensational and irresponsible newspapers in 1898.

It’s an easy meme: Juicy, delicious, easy to remember. It’s also a classic media-driven myth, a tall tale about the news media that dissolves under scrutiny.

The latest to repeat the myth was London’s Daily Telegraph, which usually ranks among Britain’s “quality” newspapers. (Unlike, that is, the raunchy and outlandish London tabloids of Rupert Murdoch.)

In an article yesterday that discussed the Hearst Corp.’s magazine holdings, the Telegraph said of William Randolph, who died in 1951:

“Through Hearst’s newspapers and magazines, he had enormous political influence and is sometimes credited with pushing opinion in the US into a war with Spain in 1898.”

Few serious historians of late 19th century America, and no recent biographers of Hearst credit (or blame) him and his publications with “pushing” the country into the war with Spain.

It just didn’t happen that way.

Like many media myths, Hearst-the-war-monger offers a simplistic explanation for a complex subject. It is far easier to blame Hearst’s yellow press for fomenting the conflict than it is to sort through the failed diplomacy that led the United States and Spain to go to war over Cuba in April 1898.

As I wrote in my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, the New York newspapers of Hearst and his rival Joseph Pulitzer exerted at best limited agenda-setting influence on the U.S. press in the run-up to the war.

As I wrote 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….”

Often cited as Exhibit A in the lineup of evidence that supposedly fingers Hearst as a war-monger is his own vow to “furnish the war” with Spain.

The pledge supposedly was sent by telegram to the artist Frederic Remington, who in January 1897 was on assignment to Cuba for Hearst’s New York Journal. Cuba at the time was in open rebellion against Spanish colonial rule–a rebellion that gave rise in 1898 to the Spanish-American War.

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

Reasons for doubting the anecdote are many, and include the fact that the purported telegram containing Hearst’s vow has never surfaced. Hearst, himself, denied having sent such a message, and Remington apparently never discussed the matter.

The purported vow, moreover, is illogical: 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 very reason he sent Remington to Cuba in the first place.

What’s more, Spanish authorities would have intercepted a telegram that contained a passage vowing to “furnish the war.” The Spanish controlled all incoming and outgoing cable traffic in Cuba in 1897 and they surely would have called attention to Hearst’s vow as a clear-cut example of Yankee meddling.

Which it would have been, had it been sent.

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , , , , , , ,

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

Recent and related:

, , ,

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

Recent and related:

<!–[if !mso]> the Journal, the Cisneros jailbreak and rescue was “epochal,”
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
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).

, , , , , , , , ,

On the high plateau of media distrust

In 1897, Debunking, Hurricane Katrina, Media myths, New York Times, Newspapers, Yellow Journalism on September 30, 2010 at 10:22 am

A Gallup poll released yesterday suggested that distrust of the news media has reached a high plateau among American adults.

Fifty-seven percent of Gallup’s respondents, the most ever, said they had little or no trust in the “mass media … when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.” A year ago, the little-to-no trust response rate was 55 percent; in 2008 it was 56 percent.

As Andrew Malcolm noted at his engaging Top of the Ticket blog, the new “record high” in media distrust was reached “by one lousy percentage point.”

Even so, there’s little comfort in having reached such a plateau. And the factors accounting for a pronounced level of popular distrust are several–and hardly unfamiliar.

Surely one reason is that it’s commonplace to bad-mouth the news media as unreliable and unfair. Media-bashing has long been in fashion–and the news media are prone to beat up on themselves, and their rivals.

A commentary posted yesterday at the Atlantic blog put it well in saying that “media voices increasingly distinguish themselves by telling us not to trust the rest of the mainstream media. Think about all of the mass media today that tells us how stupid mass media is.”

True enough. That has to have an effect.

But the news media have long indulged in aiming brickbats and insults at one another. For the news media, media-bashing has long been an irresistible pasttime.

The ever-appealing and often-invoked epithet “yellow journalism” dates after all to 1897–and the efforts of a New York newspaper editor to find a pithy and imaginative way to denigrate what then was called the “new journalism” of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

Traditional and new, the media are everywhere these days and their ubiquity no doubt fosters some disdain and contempt. A hint of that contempt can be detected in the recent Pew Research Center’s news-consumption survey, which reported that 17 percent of American adults go newsless on a typical day.

Although the news media are everywhere, a sizable portion of the population has little use for them.

Going newsless can’t be easily accomplished, given the variety of readily accessible platforms by which news is delivered. But the going-newsless option is especially pronounced among American adults younger than 30: Pew’s report said 27 percent of that cohort gets no news on a typical day.

The prominent and well-documented fabrication scandals of several years ago doubt have contributed to the plateau of media distrust. The journalistic fraud committed by Jayson Blair of the New York Times and Jack Kelley of USA Today, among others, surely has left a bad taste for the media among many news consumers.

The inclination to distrust the media surely was reinforced by the highly exaggerated news coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans in 2005.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, my new book that debunks prominent media-driven myths, the Katrina coverage was “no high, heroic moment in American journalism. … 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.”

And that reporting was steeped in error.

The fifth anniversary of Katrina’s landfall was an occasion to revisit just how shoddy the news coverage was in the storm’s aftermath. And that anniversary fell shortly before Gallup conducted its annual media-trust survey.

Gallup said 1,019 adults were interviewed by telephone in a random survey conducted September 13-16. (The sampling error was plus or minus four percentage points, meaning the level of distrust could be as great as 61 percent, or as narrow as 53 percent.)

Mundane factors probably contribute to the plateau of distrust as well. Staff cuts at many U.S. newspaper, including the unsung heroes manning copy desks, have been blamed for an increase grammar, spelling, and factual errors.

It’s not that newspapers ever were mostly free of such lapses. Anecdotally at least, they seem more frequent and conspicuous. The ombudsman, or reader’s representative, at the Washington Post suggested as much last year in writing that growing numbers of readers were calling on him “to complain about typos and small errors” appearing in the newspaper.

And it’s become a cliché to say that such small-bore errors undermine credibility–or, perhaps more accurately, encourage media distrust.

And then there is the matter of limited viewpoint diversity in American newsrooms, a point I raise in Getting It Wrong.

Few journalists for mainstream national media “consider themselves politically conservative,” I note, referring to surveys conducted in 2004 and 2008 for the Washington-based Committee of Concerned Journalists. The surveys found that the overwhelming majority of national correspondents for U.S. news media considered themselves to be politically “moderate” or “liberal.”

Interestingly, Gallup reported that “Democrats and liberals remain far more likely than other political and ideological groups to trust the media and to perceive no bias.”

Viewpoint diversity in newsrooms “is an issue not much discussed in American journalism,” I write in Getting It Wrong. “But it is hardly irrelevant.”

Especially when distrust of the news media has found such a high plateau.

WJC

Recent and related: