W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘Cronkite Moment’

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Media myths send ‘misleading’ message of media power

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Hurricane Katrina, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Newspapers, Spanish-American War, Washington Post, Watergate myth on November 13, 2010 at 9:42 am

In this, the second of three installments drawn from Newsbusters‘ lengthy interview about Getting It Wrong, I discuss why it’s vital to debunk media-driven myths, those dubious tales about the news media that masquerade as factual.

This installment also includes a discussion about the flawed and over-the-top news coverage of Hurricane Katrina‘s aftermath in 2005.

The Newsbusters interview was conducted by Lachlan Markay, who described Getting It Wrong as “exhaustively researched and painstakingly even-handed.”

The third and final excerpt from the interview will be posted tomorrow at Media Myth Alert . The interview transcript is accessible here.

NEWSBUSTERS: So why, personally, do you feel that–you obviously feel it’s very important that these myths be exposed as myths. What’s the damage that these myths do if they carry on unquestioned?

CAMPBELL: I think one of the drawbacks [of media-driven myths] is that they … suggest power that the news media typically do not have. Media power in my view tends to be episodic, tends to be situational, nuanced, and it’s typically trumped by other forces and other factors. Government power, police power tend to overwhelm media power on an average basis in most circumstances.

But these stories–about [Walter] Cronkite, about [Edward] Murrow, about Watergate, about [William Randolph] Hearst, and some of the others in the book–typically send a message that the media have great power, to do good or to do harm.

They can start a war, they can end a war, they can alter the political landscape, they can even bring down a president–they’re that powerful. That’s absolutely a misleading message. It’s not how media power is applied or exerted, and that’s an important reason to debunk these myths.

There’s also some inherent importance too in trying to set the record straight to the extent you can. And in that regard, the book is aligned with the fundamental objective of journalism as practiced in this country, of getting it right, getting the story correct. …

NB: And some of the–the Katrina example comes to mind–some of the myths actually have to do with the media–not just a flawed or misleading understanding of events, but a completely fabricated, and made up and very destructive events sometimes. And I say Katrina because there were all these reports of gunfire in New Orleans, of dead bodies being piled up in the Superdome, none of which was true.

CAMPBELL: That’s right. …  Not only that, but the collective sense that those kinds of media reports gave about New Orleans–the place had just collapsed, the city and its people had collapsed into this sort of apocalyptic, Mad Max-like, nightmarish scene–and it served to besmirch the city and its citizens at the time of their direst need.

And that, I think, is just absolutely reprehensible. And that’s the message that we were getting [from the coverage of Katrina’s aftermath in early September 2005]. …

To the credit of the news media, they did go back –many of them, many of these news organizations–and took a look at how they got it wrong. But that tended to be a one-off kind of thing, and placed … inside the papers.

Broadcast media didn’t do much of this at all. … So even to this day, five years on, I still don’t believe the news media have taken full measure of the mistakes they made in the coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

The tendency is still to blame government–local, state, and certainly federal government–for an inept response. But the story was deeper than that, and it was more complex than that, and that’s the part that the news media got wrong.

NB: And of course one of the consequences of that misreporting was that, as you mention, the federal government especially bore a lot of the blame for what was happening there. And then you also have Murrow taking down perhaps the most notorious cold warrior in our country’s history, you have Cronkite as the standard-bearer for the left’s main cause during the 1960s, you have Woodward and Bernstein taking down a Republican president. Are there political factors at work here, do you think?

CAMPBELL: I think that some of the more enduring myths are those that have appeal across the political spectrum.

The Cronkite moment is one of them–it appeals because this is, for folks on the right, this is a real clear-cut example of how “the news media screwed us in Vietnam, and how they prevented us from winning the war there.” And on the left it’s an example of telling truth to power, and how Walter Cronkite was able to pierce … the nonsense, and make it clear to the Johnson administration that the policy in Vietnam was bankrupt.

Something for everyone.

End of part two

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Inaugurating the Parker-Qualls lecture

In Debunking, Media myths, Spanish-American War, War of the Worlds, Washington Post, Watergate myth, Yellow Journalism on November 11, 2010 at 10:55 pm

I inaugurated last night the Parker-Qualls lecture in communications at the University of North Alabama with an audience of some 300 students, faculty, staff, administrators, and townspeople in attendance.

My talk centered on three of the 10 prominent media-driven myths debunked in  my latest book, Getting It Wrong.

I discussed the heroic-journalist myth that has become the dominant narrative of the Watergate scandal, which ended Richard Nixon’s presidency in 1974; the mythical  “Cronkite Moment” of 1968 that supposedly forced President Lyndon Johnson to realize the futility of the war effort in Vietnam, and The War of the Worlds radio dramatization that reputedly pitched Americans into panic and mass hysteria in 1938.

During the Q-and-A that followed my presentation, I was asked how media audiences can better identify potential media-driven myths, those dubious stories about or by the news media that masquerade as factual. It’s a fine question, with no easy answer.

I advised being wary about media-related stories that just sound too neat and too tidy. The famous vow attributed to William Randolph Hearst–“you furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war”–is a telling example, I said. The quote just seems too good, too perfect to be true.  It deftly captures Hearst as war-monger, but it’s supported by almost no evidence. It’s almost certainly apocryphal.

Media audiences also should apply logic and healthy skepticism to stories about or by the news media and their power, I said, citing The War of the Worlds dramatization as an example. It it really plausible that a radio show–even one as  clever and imaginative as that–really could send tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets in sheer panic and hysteria? It doesn’t seem logical to me.

I also recommended consulting online sources: Some, like Media Myth Alert, are devoted to mythbusting. Even a simple Google search will readily turn skeptical accounts of popular, mediacentric stories.

I also was asked whether there were candidate-media myths that proved to true. Another good question and I couldn’t recall any immediately.

Then I remembered having had suspicions about Joe Namath’s guarantee that the New York Jets would defeat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl. That Namath guaranteed victory sounded to me almost too neat and tidy to be true.  (I privately congratulated myself on remembering being suspicious of that quote,  as it enabled me to mention a football legend who starred at the University of Alabama, a team much followed in Northern Alabama.)

Anyway, it turned out that Namath had indeed made such a guarantee–which I quickly determined in a check of a database of historical newspapers. So that was a candidate myth that proved to be true.

I also was asked what prompted me to write Getting It Wrong. In some ways, I replied, the book built upon previous research. I mentioned my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, in which I addressed the myth of Hearst’s famous vow.

I noted that I returned to that topic in the first chapter of Getting It Wrong, offering additional detail about how the often-retold tale about Hearst’s vow took hold and was diffused.

Another inspiration for the book stemmed from my classes at American University. I’ve often included in my courses references to the “Cronkite Moment,” I noted for example, adding that the more I read about and thought about such anecdotes, the more dubious they seemed to be.

And under scrutiny–in researching them–they dissolved as apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.

My hosts at the University of North Alabama have been Greg Pitts, chair of the department of communications, and Jim R. Martin, a journalism historian and editor of the scholarly journal American Journalism.

WJC

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The sporting version of the ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, New York Times, Year studies on November 9, 2010 at 8:01 am

The mythical “Cronkite Moment” is a hardy and impressively flexible tale.

As a presumptive lesson about journalism’s capacity to tell truths to power, the “Cronkite Moment” turns up in the media in all sorts of ways.

He of the 'Cronkite Moment'

It appears even on the sports pages.

The “Cronkite Moment“–in which the downbeat assessment of CBS New anchorman Walter Cronkite supposedly forced President Lyndon Johnson to understand the futility of his Vietnam War policy–turned up yesterday in a column posted at cbssports.com.

In discussing the firing of Wade Phillips as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys football team, columnist Ray Ratto wrote:

“Cronkite one night came out against the war, right there on the evening news (when there were just three networks and the evening news meant something), and Johnson knew at that moment that he was finished. ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite,’ Johnson is alleged to have said, ‘I’ve lost Middle America.””

Flexibility may make the anecdote appealing and long-lived. But it doesn’t mean it’s true.

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the “Cronkite Moment” is  a media-driven myth, a tall tale about the news media masquerading as factual.

Let’s unpack what Ratto wrote:

  • Cronkite didn’t really come “out against the war”: He described the U.S. military effort in Vietnam as “mired in stalemate,” which hardly was a striking or novel interpretation at time his assessment was offered in early 1968.
  • Cronkite didn’t present his “mired in stalemate” commentary on the evening news: It came at the end of an hour-long special report about Vietnam that aired February 27, 1968.
  • Johnson did not know “at that moment that he was finished.” Johnson, as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, didn’t even 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, a longtime political ally.

At about the time Cronkite was uttering his “mired in stalemate” comment, Johnson wasn’t in front of a television set. He didn’t exclaim, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America”–or words to that effect. He said:

“Today you are 51, John. 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.”

There was no woe-is-me about having “lost Cronkite.” There was no epiphany for the president that his war policy was a shambles.

Only a light-hearted comment about Connally’s turning 51.

The power of the “Cronkite Moment,” I write in Getting It Wrong, lies “in the sudden, unexpected, and decisive effect it supposedly had on the president.” Had Johnson seen the program later, on videotape, it would not have carried the sudden, unexpected punch that the “Cronkite Moment” is presumed to have had.

Indeed, I write, “Such an effect would have been absent, or greatly diminished, had Johnson had seen the program on videotape at some later date.”

As I say, Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” view was neither notable nor extraordinary in early 1968. Mark Kurlansky wrote in his fine year-study about 1968 that Cronkite’s view was “hardly a radical position” for the time.

Indeed, nearly seven months before Cronkite’s program, a report in the  New York Times had cited “disinterested observers” in reporting that the war in Vietnam “is not going well.” Victory, the Times reported, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

This analysis was published on the Times’ front page in August 1967, beneath the headline:

“Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.”

WJC

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‘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

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LBJ ‘changed Vietnam policy based on Cronkite’s views’? Hardly

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on November 7, 2010 at 10:16 am

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

The presumptive “Cronkite Moment” is one of American journalism’s most memorable occasions. It was a time, supposedly, when a leading media figure offered analysis so penetrating and revealing that it altered U.S. foreign policy.

That notion was reiterated the other day in a commentary posted at the Big Journalism online site. The commentary alluded to the broadcast in February 1968 in which CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite declared that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.” President Lyndon Johnson supposedly saw the Cronkite report and, upon hearing the anchorman’s assessment, realized his war policy was a  shambles.

“If I’ve lost Cronkite,” Johnson purportedly declared, “I’ve lost Middle America.”

Another version has the president saying: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.”

In a clear reference to the mythical “Cronkite Moment,” the Big Journalism commentary stated:

“LBJ was afraid of the activist old media when he changed his Vietnam policy based on what Walter Cronkite thought. Nothing could be more sad and pathetic than that and America paid a dear price for Johnson’s fear of the media.”

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the Cronkite program on Vietnam quite simply did not have the powerful effects so often attributed to it. The “Cronkite Moment” is one hardy media-driven myth.

I further note in Getting It Wrong:

“Scrutiny of the evidence associated with the program reveals that Johnson did not have—could not have had—the abrupt yet resigned reaction that so often has been attributed to him. That’s because Johnson did not see the program when it was aired.”

The president was not in front of a television set when Cronkite’s report on Vietnam aired on the evening of February 27, 1968. He was not at the White House. He was in Austin, Texas, attending the 51st birthday party of a longtime political ally, Governor John Connally.

And about the time Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” assessment, Johnson wasn’t throwing up his hands in despair over his war policy. He was offering light-hearted banter about Connally’s age, saying:

“Today you are 51, John. 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.”

There is no evidence that Johnson ever watched a recording of the Cronkite show. Johnson’s memoir, The Vantage Point, is silent about the program, offering no clue as to whether he ever saw it or, if he did, what he thought of it.

In any case, the power of the reputed “Cronkite Moment” lies “in the sudden, unexpected, and decisive effect it supposedly had on the president,” I note in Getting It Wrong. “Such an effect would have been absent, or greatly diminished, had Johnson had seen the program on videotape at some later date.”

I also write:

“Even if he had seen Cronkite’s program on videotape, Johnson gave no indication of having taken the anchorman’s message to heart.

“Just three days after the program aired, Johnson vowed in remarks at a testimonial dinner in Texas that the United States would ‘not cut and run’ from Vietnam. ‘We’re not going to be Quislings,’ the president said, invoking the surname of a Norwegian politician who helped the Nazis take over his country. ‘And we’re not going to be appeasers.'”

In the immediate aftermath of the Cronkite program, Johnson remained hawkish on the war in Vietnam. He was not moved by a TV show he had not seen.

WJC

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SRO for ‘Getting It Wrong’ talk at UMd

In Anniversaries, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Jessica Lynch, Media myths, Media myths and radio, War of the Worlds, Washington Post, Watergate myth on November 5, 2010 at 11:50 am

A terrific audience of journalism students and faculty turned out last night for my talk at the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism.

It was standing-room-only at the Knight Hall conference room, where I discussed several chapters in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, which debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths.

I walked through the heroic-journalist myth of the Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency; the mythical  “Cronkite Moment” of 1968 that reputedly shifted U.S. public opinion about the war in Vietnam, and The War of the Worlds radio dramatization of 1938 that supposedly panicked listeners across the United States.

During the Q-and-A period that followed, I touched on the famous vow to “furnish the war” attributed to William Randolph Hearst and on the erroneously reported battlefield heroics of Private Jessica Lynch early in the Iraq War.

An intriguing question from the audience was what message should students take away from a book that identifies as media-driven myths some of the best-known stories in American journalism. The implication was that mythbusting may undercut the regard would-be journalists have for the profession.

I replied by saying that I  don’t consider Getting It Wrong a media-bashing book: Such books are many on the market as it is.

Rather, I said, the mythbusting in Getting It Wrong is aligned with the fundamental objective of American journalism. And that is to get it right, to offer an account that is as accurate as possible.

And it does journalism little good to indulge in tales such as the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate or the mythical “Cronkite Moment” that offer misleading interpretations about the news media and their power.

Debunking media myths, as I write in Getting It Wrong, “can help to place media influence in more coherent context.”

Nor should we worry about students being disappointed that well-known and even cherished stories about American journalism have been exposed as mythical. It shouldn’t be disheartening to learn the news media aren’t necessarily the powerful forces they are often believed to be.

Students can handle it.

Not only that, but mythbusting can offer them useful lessons in the importance of applying skepticism and a critical eye to dominant narratives and received wisdom of American journalism.

Indeed, Professor John Kirch, host and organizer of my talk at Maryland, does just that in presenting these and other tales in his journalism classes. Doing so can become a revealing exercise in critical thinking.

I also was asked about candidate-myths for a prospective sequel to Getting It Wrong.

A strong candidate for such a book, I said, is the myth of viewer-listener disagreement in the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960.

The myth has it that people who watched the debate on television thought that Senator John F. Kennedy won; those who listened on radio thought Vice President Richard Nixon had the better of the exchanges.

The notion of listener-viewer-disagreement was long ago debunked by David L. Vancil and Sue D. Pendell, in an article in Central States Speech Journal. They noted that reports of viewer-listener disagreement typically were anecdotal and the few surveys that hinted at a viewer-listener disconnect were too small and unrepresentative from which to make confident judgments.

But the myth is a hardy one, I noted, and it resurfaced in late September, at the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy-Nixon encounter.

Among the 80 or so people in attendance last night was Jamie McIntyre, former Pentagon correspondent for CNN. Afterward, we compared notes about the misreported Lynch case, which the Washington Post propelled into the public domain with a botched, front-page story in early April 2003.

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‘If I’ve lost Cronkite’–ever-hardy, and illusory

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Newspapers on November 4, 2010 at 5:15 pm

Few tales in American journalism are as hardy as the mythical “Cronkite Moment,” that occasion in late February 1968 when an on-air commentary by CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite altered a president’s thinking about the war in Vietnam.

The purported “Cronkite Moment” is so trenchant, so believable and revealing that it lives on as a timeless example of the power of the news media–of how effective they can be as forces for truth-telling.

Problem is, the “Cronkite Moment” is illusory.

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the anecdote is dubious and improbable on many grounds.

Still, the “Cronkite Moment” made another appearance recently, this time in column posted at the New York edition of examiner.com. The column declared:

“President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, referring to diminishing support from pivotal 1960s news anchor Walter Cronkite, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.'”

The anecdote centers around Cronkite’s special program on the Vietnam War, a show that aired February 27, 1968. Near the end of the report, Cronkite declared the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate” and suggested negotiations with the communist North Vietnamese as a way to end the conflict.

At the White House, Johnson supposedly watched the Cronkite program. Upon hearing the anchorman’s assessment, the president supposedly snapped off the television set and told an aide or aides:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or something to that effect. As I point out in Getting It Wrong, versions vary markedly as to what the president supposedly said. And acute version variability can be a marker of a media-driven myth.

The anecdote’s broader point is that Cronkite was such an honest and trusted figure that his views could sway opinions of thousands of Americans. And with Cronkite having gone wobbly on Vietnam, the Johnson White House supposedly reeled.

But the Cronkite program on Vietnam quite clearly had no such effect.

Johnson didn’t see the show when it aired. He wasn’t in front of a television set; nor was he at the White House.

The president that night was in Austin, Texas, attending the 51st birthday party of a longtime political ally, Governor John Connally.

At about the moment Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” commentary, Johnson was offering light-hearted banter about Connally and his age.

“Today you are 51, John,” the president told Connally. “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.”

Earlier that day, Johnson has delivered a rousing speech in Dallas, in which he cast America’s role in Vietnam in Churchillian terms.

“There will be blood, sweat and tears shed,” the president declared, adding:  “I do not believe that America will ever buckle” in pursuit of its objectives in Vietnam.

Even if the president did see the Cronkite program, or was told about the show, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine how his mood could have swung so abruptly, from vigorously defending the war effort to throwing up his hands in despair.

But if the “Cronkite Moment” is to be believed, that’s what happened: An abrupt, dramatic, and decisive change of heart occurred within hours of the president’s hawkish speech in Dallas.

And that’s just not likely.

WJC

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Mythical ‘Cronkite Moment’ is ‘believed because it’s believable’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on November 2, 2010 at 5:15 pm

Johnson and 'Cronkite Moment'

The Wall Street Journal‘s “Best of the Web” online feature yesterday invoked the mythical “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, recalling it as “the oft-told story of President Johnson lamenting, ‘If I’ve lost [Walter] Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.'”

“Best of the Web,” which is compiled and written by James Taranto, noted that the Cronkite-Johnson anecdote “is almost certainly apocryphal, but it was widely believed because it was believable.”

It’s a telling point: The tale is believed–and is often retold–because it is believable. Like other media-driven myths, the “Cronkite Moment” resides on the cusp of plausibility.

The anecdote tells of Lyndon Johnson’s supposed reaction to Cronkite’s on-air assessment that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate” and that negotiations might prove to be the way out. Johnson reputedly watched the program at the White House and, upon hearing Cronkite’s show-ending commentary, leaned over and switched off the television and said to an aide or aides:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or words to that effect. Versions vary markedly as to what the president supposedly said.

Cronkite’s assessment reputedly was an epiphany to the president, who after the “Cronkite Moment” altered war policy and decided against seeking reelection. In the aftermath of Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment, American public opinion also swung against the war.

Or so the story has it.

But as I write in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, Cronkite’s report, which aired on CBS on February 27, 1968, had none of those effects–principally because Johnson did not see the show program when it aired.

The president at the time was in Austin, Texas, attending the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, a longtime political ally (see photo, above).

There’s no evidence that Johnson later saw the program on videotape, or what he thought of it, if he did see it.

We do know, though, that Johnson was openly hawkish about the war in the days and weeks immediately following Cronkite’s report. As I point out in Getting It Wrong, in mid-March 1968, Johnson gave a rousing, lectern-pounding speech in which he urged a “total national effort” to win the war in Vietnam.

So Johnson was hardly throwing up his hands in despair. That he remained hawkish signals how the “Cronkite Moment” represented no epiphany for the president.

Taranto’s quite right about the anecdote’s being “believed because it was believable.” Although it’s doubtful whether Cronkite ever was “the most trusted” man in America, he was a force in American broadcast journalism in the 1960s and 1970s, a time when network television news mostly was delivered on just three or four channels.

The Cronkite-Johnson story also lives on because it is so readily grasped and easily recalled. As I write in Getting It Wrong, prominent media myths are tenacious because they are reductive–they tend to “minimize or negate complexity in historical events and offer simplistic and misleading interpretations instead.”

The Cronkite-Johnson anecdote is a simplistic tale, but it also affirms the supposed power of the news media in American life. On important issues, the anecdote says, the news media can tell truth to power. They can be vital, even courageous forces in shaping and executing policy.

But all of those powerful effects begin to dissolve when it’s pointed out that Johnson never saw Cronkite’s program in the first place.

WJC

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Discussing ‘Getting It Wrong’ at a special place

In Anniversaries, Debunking, Media myths, Media myths and radio, Newspapers, War of the Worlds on October 28, 2010 at 5:30 pm

There was a fine turnout today for my book talk at the Library of Congress, the splendid institution where I have done a great deal of research over the past 12 years or so.

The Library is a special place, and more than 120 people were there as I reviewed three of the 10 media-driven myths that are addressed and debunked in my latest book, Getting It Wrong.

Two of the myths discussed possess a strong Washington, D.C., connections; the third was timely in a seasonal, late-October sort of way. Specifically, I discussed:

  • The heroic-journalist myth of Watergate: That is, the notion that the investigative reporting of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought down the corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon.
  • The so-called “Cronkite Moment” of February 1968: The belief President Lyndon Johnson realized the Vietnam Was was unwinnable following a dire, on-air assessment by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, who declared the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Southeast Asia.
  • The War of the Worlds radio dramatization: The widely held view that Orson Welles’ clever adaptation of The War of the Worlds, a science fiction thriller about a deadly Martian invasion of Earth, touched widespread panic and mass hysteria on Halloween Even 1938.

Welles and 'War of Worlds'

The anniversary of Welles’ War of Worlds broadcast is Saturday.

In my talk at the Library of Congress, I pointed out how improbable it was that a radio show–even one as inspired as Welles’ adaptation–could have had the effect of sending tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of listeners into the streets in panic and hysteria.

There were many internal clues for listeners signaling that the show was just that–a radio show.

It aired Sundays, from 8-9 p.m., Eastern time, on CBS–in the usual time slot for Welles’ program, which he called the Mercury Theatre on the Air. Welles was the show’s star and director, and his distinctive voice would have been familiar to many listeners that long ago October night.

What’s more, events described in the show moved far too rapidly to be plausible or believable. In less than 30 minutes, for example, the Martians blasted off from their planet, traveled millions of miles to Earth, landed in rural New Jersey, set up lethal heat rays, wiped out units of American soldiers, and began a destructive march on New York City.

As I point out in Getting It Wrong, “Claims that the broadcast fomented mass panic and hysteria were dramatically overstated” by daily newspapers the following day.

Close reading of the contemporaneous newspaper accounts made it clear that they based their characterizations of widespread turmoil on relatively small numbers of anecdotal cases of people who were frightened or upset. These anecdotes, I write, “typically were not of broad scale but were small-bore. They described agitation and odd behavior among individuals, their families, or neighbors.”

But by no means did these accounts suggest fright that night reached the level of nationwide panic and mass hysteria.

For newspapers, however, the notion that The War of the Worlds show had caused great panic and alarm represented an irresistible opportunity to bash radio as an unreliable, untrustworthy upstart medium. And newspapers did so in overwhelmingly negative editorial commentary.

“Radio is new but it has adult responsibilities,” the New York Times declared about the show. “It has not mastered itself or the material it uses. It does many things which the newspapers learned long ago not to do, such as mixing its news and advertising.”

Such criticism was more than mildly self-serving. After all, radio by 1938 had become an increasingly important rival source for news, information, and advertising.

And that negative commentary helped to lock into place the mistaken notion that the radio show about Martian invaders had sown panic and hysteria across the country.

My talk was sponsored by the Library’s Center for the Book, which is directed by John Y. Cole. Library stalwarts in attendance today included Terri Sierra, Mark  Sweeney, Georgia Higley, and G. Travis Westly.

WJC

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Books and Banter club discusses ‘Getting It Wrong’

In Debunking, Furnish the war, Hurricane Katrina, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on October 19, 2010 at 6:46 pm

I was honored that the Books and Banter club in Washington, D.C., selected Getting It Wrong for discussion at its October meeting.

Getting It Wrong is my latest book; it debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths–dubious or improbable stories about the news media that masquerade as factual.

Sixteen members of the club met last night at a restaurant in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia–within a block or two of the underground parking garage where during the Watergate investigation Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward sometimes met his high-level federal source known as “Deep Throat.”

At the request of club member Paige Gold, who led the discussion, I dropped in for the closing half of the discussion about Getting It Wrong.

I told the club members that I didn’t consider Getting It Wrong as an exercise in media-bashing.

Rather, I said, I like to think of the book as aligned with a fundamental imperative in journalism–that of getting it right.

I had a great time fielding the club members’ very thoughtful, engaging, and intriguing questions.

Among those questions was whether media audiences bear any responsibility for the tenacity of media myths.

Not directly or significantly, I replied.

The myths addressed in Getting It Wrong are, in one way or another, all media-driven. Journalists and news organizations have been the primary culprits in pushing them. Their doing so is more than a little self-serving: After all, media myths serve to reinforce the notion that, for good or bad, the news media are central and decisive forces in American life.

So at one end of the scale, I said, “we have William Randolph Hearst, journalist-as-war-monger, who famously vowed to ‘furnish the war‘ with Spain” in the late 19th century.

At the other, I added, we have the heroic journalists of Watergate, Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein, whose investigative reporting brought down a corrupt presidency.

Myths such as those can be used to identify the media as malevolent forces or as indispensable guardians of truth and democratic values. And variety of that kind helps explain why media myths can be so tenacious.

I also was asked what should readers be sure to take away from the book.

In jest, I replied that I thought they should take away the recognition that Getting It Wrong is such a good book they should offer it as gifts to friends and family, especially at the year-end holidays.

Seriously, I added, the takeaway for readers may well be to treat media content with a healthy measure of skepticism, to realize that news reports often are tentative, incomplete, prone to error and revision.

This is especially the case in coverage of disasters, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina a little more than five years ago.

Almost certainly, the early reports about a disaster will prove to be exaggerated in some fashion. The coverage of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans offers a telling reminder, I said.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, Katrina’s aftermath represented “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.”

The flawed coverage–the erroneous reports of snipers firing at medical personnel and relief helicopters, of bodies being stacked like cordwood in the New Orleans convention center, of roving gangs raping and killing, of children with their throats slashed, of sharks plying the city’s flood waters–was not without consequences.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, the over-the-top reporting “had the very real and serious effects of delaying the arrival of aid to New Orleans, of diverting and distorting the deployment of resources and capabilities, of heightening the anxiety of [storm] evacuees at the Superdome and Convention Center, and of broadly stigmatizing a city and its people.”

WJC

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