W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘Furnish the war’

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‘Junk food of jornalismo’: Diário writes up ‘Getting It Wrong’

In Bay of Pigs, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Media myths and radio, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Reviews, Watergate myth on June 28, 2010 at 2:49 pm

Today’s edition of the venerable  Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias includes a write up about Getting It Wrong, my new book about prominent media-driven myths–those false, dubious, improbable stories about the news media that masquerade as factual.

With the help of the online translation site Babelfish, I was able to make out a good deal of the Diário review, which says in part:

“W. Joseph Campbell in Getting it Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, published the University of California Press, [says] these ‘myths can be thought as junk food of jornalismo.'”

The Diário article mentions several media myths addressed and debunked in Getting It Wrong, including those of William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain; the 1938 radio dramatization of the War of the Worlds which supposedly sowed panic across the United States; the notion that Edward R. Murrow’s 1954 See It Now television program abruptly halted Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch-hunt, and the myth that the New York Times suppressed its coverage of the run-up to the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

Diário characterizes as one of the book’s “more concrete” examples “the Watergate case,” in which reporters for the Washington Post are credited with having toppled the corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon.

Media myths, the articles notes, are not innocuous; ” they can distort the perception of the power and function of jornalismo” because “they tend to give the media” more power and influence than they rightly deserve. It also says that myths can “minimize the complexity of the historical events for simplistic interpretations.” Both of those are important points raised in Getting It Wrong.

The review closes by taking up the suggestion I offer in the conclusion of Getting It Wrong, namely that there are more media myths to debunk.

“By no means do the media myths examined on these pages represent a closed universe,” I write in the book’s closing passage. “Others surely will assert themselves. They may tell of great deeds by journalists, or of their woeful failings. They may well hold appeal across the political spectrum, offering something for almost everyone. They may be about war, or politics, or biomedical research.

“Predictably, they will be delicious tales, easy to remember, and perhaps immodest and self-congratulatory. They probably will offer vastly simplified accounts of history, and may be propelled by cinematic treatment.  They will be media-driven myths, all rich candidates for debunking.”

WJC

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‘Getting It Wrong’ on the road in Oberlin, OH

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Spanish-American War, War of the Worlds, Watergate myth, Yellow Journalism on June 27, 2010 at 8:40 am

I gave a talk yesterday about Getting It Wrong to an engaging audience at the college bookstore in Oberlin, Ohio.

The talk was facilitated quite well by Kira McGirr, the bookstore’s tradebook manager, and covered such topics as William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of the 19th century, the myth of the “Cronkite Moment” of February 1968, and the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate.

We also discussed the media-driven myth of “crack babies” and the famous 1938 radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds, which supposedly was so dramatic that tens of thousands of Americans were seized by panic and mass hysteria.

One of Kira’s questions was how long it may take before the myths discussed and debunked in Getting It Wrong to be excised from history books. It’s a very good question, and difficult to say for sure.

I responded by saying some of the myths–such as those of Watergate and the War of the Worlds—are so appealing, delicious, and ingrained that they may never be totally uprooted.

The same probably goes for Hearst’s purported vow: That anecdote has been around since 1901 and likely is too appealing ever to be utterly debunked. What’s more, the “furnish the war” tale is a neat, tidy, reductive way of explaining the causes of the Spanish-American War:  Hearst, the war-mongering publisher, is to blame.

It’s far easier to blame Hearst than it is to grapple with the complexities of the diplomatic demarche in 1897-98 that failed to resolve differences among Spain, Cuba, and the United States: Failed diplomacy, not the contents of Hearst’s yellow press, led to the Spanish-American War.

We also discussed how high-quality cinematic treatments can press media myths into the public consciousness.

That certainly was the case with All the President’s Men, the most-viewed movie about Watergate, in which Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman played the starring roles of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

The film depicted the reporters as central, indeed crucial, to cracking the Watergate scandal, I noted. For many Americans,  All the President’s Men is an important way of learning about Watergate. As I write in Getting It Wrong: “More than thirty-five years later, what remains most vivid, memorable, and accessible about Watergate is the cinematic version of All the President’s Men.”

The book talk coincided with Oberlin’s fifth annual Chalk Walk event, at which artists and aspiring artists draw often-elaborate pastel images on the sidewalks in the heart of town.

One of Kira’s colleagues, Amanda Turner, drew a fine rendering of the cover of Getting It Wrong at the entrance to the bookstore (see photo).

Amanda, Kira, and I posed for the photo below.
Several former classmates of mine at Oberlin Firelands High School (class of 1970) also attended the book talk.

WJC

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Photo credit: Ann-Marie C. Regan (Chalk Walk images)

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LBJ’s ‘Vietnam epiphany’ wasn’t Cronkite’s show

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on June 22, 2010 at 12:28 pm

The irresistible “Cronkite Moment” emerged again the other day, this time in a column in a Michigan newspaper claiming that “President Lyndon Baines Johnson had his Vietnam epiphany when he lost Walter Cronkite.”

The “Cronkite Moment” was a broadcast in February 1968 that supposedly was so potent  that it had the effect of prompting Johnson to realize the hopelessness of his war policy in Vietnam.

The story goes that Johnson at the White House watched Cronkite’s special report on Vietnam and, after hearing the anchorman say the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” and might consider a negotiated settlement, snapped off the television set and exclaimed:

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

Or words to that effect.

As is described in Getting It Wrong, my new book about media-driven myths, versions vary as to what the president supposedly said.

Getting It Wrong also points out that 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.

As 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.”

Thus in the days and weeks immediately after the Cronkite program, Johnson remained hawkish on the war.

Johnson’s “epiphany,” as it were, came not in front of a television set in late February 1968 but in discussions a month later with informal advisers at the White House.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, “Johnson’s change of heart on Vietnam 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.

“The theme that ran around the table was, ‘You’ve got to lower your sights,’” George Ball later recalled.

Johnson, he said, “was shaken by this kind of advice from people in whose judgment he necessarily had some confidence, because they’d had a lot of experience.”

The counsel of the Wise Men represented a tipping point in Johnson’s deciding to seek “peace through negotiations.” 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.

Johnson closed his speech with the stunning announcement that he would not seek reelection to the presidency.

WJC

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<!–[if !mso]> .[i] In a nationally televised speech on March 31, Johnson announced that he had decided to seek “peace through negotiations.” He ordered a limited halt to U.S. aerial bombing of North Vietnam as an inducement to the Hanoi government to enter peace talks. Johnson closed the speech with the stunning announcement that he would not seek reelection to the presidency

[i] George C. Herring, LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 163.

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‘Getting It Wrong’ launched at Newseum

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Spanish-American War, Washington Post, Watergate myth on June 20, 2010 at 2:09 pm

Newseum program, audience view

Getting It Wrong, my new book about media-driven myths, was launched at a terrific program yesterday at the Newseum, the $450 million museum of news in downtown Washington, D.C.

The Newseum’s John Maynard moderated a brisk “Inside Media” talk, during which I reviewed the myths of:

  • William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain,
  • Edward R. Murrow‘s  1954 See It Now television program that supposedly ended Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch-hunt,
  • the so-called “Cronkite moment” of 1968,
  • the heroic-journalist of Watergate, and
  • the supposedly superlative reporting in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina‘s landfall in 2005.

The audience (see photo, above) posed several intriguing questions about the book. Among them was whether I thought the media myths confronted in Getting It Wrong would now be forever buried.

It’s probably too soon to say, given the book’s recent publication. But I mentioned in my reply that I’ve been struck by how dearly some myths are held.

The myth of the “Cronkite moment” is an example, I said: It seems quite difficult for some people to believe that Walter Cronkite’s program on Vietnam in February 1968 was not of decisive effect.

The “Cronkite moment” may live on, and continue to be embraced, despite the weight of the evidence that Cronkite’s television report about Vietnam was of scant importance in revising policy or in shaping the president’s thinking about reelection.

At the book launch

A question was posed about how media myths emerge, and I noted that they arise from several sources, including an urge to identify examples of media power. Another factor is  what I call “complexity-avoidance”–the appeal of simplified explanations for complex historical events.

It is, after all, far easier to believe that Hearst and his “yellow press” brought on the Spanish-American War in 1898, I said, than it is to grasp the complexities of the failed diplomacy among Spain, Cuba, and the United States that gave rise to that conflict. It is far easier to believe that the Washington Post brought down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency, I said, than it is to sort through tangled lines of investigation of the Watergate scandal that ultimately forced Nixon from office.

Even then, I said, Nixon may have served out his term if not for the tape-recordings he made of his private Oval Office conversations. Those tapes, which the U.S. Supreme Court forced Nixon to produce in 1974, revealed his guilty role in the Watergate coverup.

I also was asked whether there are other media myths to bust.

Indeed there are, I said.

Getting It Wrong may deserve a sequel and suggested as candidates for a follow-on book the dubious phenomenon of “Pharm Parties” and the question of whether Cronkite really was “the most trusted man in America.”

Book signing at Newseum

I signed copies of Getting It Wrong following the “Inside Media” program, and then toasted the book’s publication at a reception sponsored by the Newseum and American University’s School of Communication.

The School’s dean, Larry Kirkman, offered generous remarks in his toast at the reception, which was attended by AU colleagues, former students, past research assistants, and friends and family.

WJC

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Photo credits:

  • Ruxandra Giura (audience view)
  • Bruce Guthrie

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Launching ‘Getting It Wrong’ at Newseum

In Bay of Pigs, Bra-burning, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Jessica Lynch, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, War of the Worlds, Washington Post, Watergate myth on June 14, 2010 at 6:28 am

My new book, Getting It Wrong, will be launched Saturday, June 19, at an “Inside Media” program at the Newseum, the $450 million museum of news in downtown Washington, D.C.

The program will begin at 2:30 p.m. in the Knight TV Studio on the third level and will feature a discussion with the Newseum’s John Maynard, followed by audience Q-and-A.

I’ll be signing copies of Getting It Wrong afterward.

The book addresses, and debunks, 10 prominent media-driven myths–stories about and/or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, on close inspection, proved to be apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.

Here is a brief description about each of the 10 myths:

  1. Remington-Hearst: William Randolph Hearst’s famous vow, “you furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war,” is almost certainly apocryphal.
  2. War of Worlds: The notion that the War of Worlds radio dramatization in 1938 caused nationwide panic and mass hysteria is exaggerated.
  3. Murrow-McCarthy: Edward R. Murrow’s famous See It Now program in March 1954 did not end Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch-hunt; Murrow in fact was very late to take on McCarthy.

    Murrow in 1954

  4. Bay of Pigs: The New York Times did not suppress its reporting in the run-up to the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.
  5. Cronkite-Johnson: Walter Cronkite’s special report on Vietnam in February 1968 did not prompt an immediate reassessment of U.S. war policy.
  6. Bra-burning: Humor columnist Art Buchwald helped spread the notion that feminist demonstrators dramatically burned their bras at a Miss America protest in September 1968.
  7. Watergate: The Washington Post’s intrepid reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, did not bring down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency. That they did is a trope that knows few bounds.
  8. Crack babies: The much-feared “bio-underclass” of children born to women who smoked crack cocaine during their pregnancies never materialized.
  9. Jessica Lynch: The Washington Post’s erroneous reporting about Jessica Lynch early in the Iraq War gave rise to several myths about her capture and rescue.
  10. Hurricane Katrina: News coverage of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans in early September 2005 was marred by wild exaggerations of extreme, Mad Max-like violence.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, the myths debunked “are among American journalism’s best-known stories. Most of them are savory tales. And at least some of them seem almost too good to be false.”

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

WJC

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Helen Thomas and Iraq War: What’s she talking about?

In Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Newspapers on June 11, 2010 at 8:12 am

Helen Thomas, the cranky, now-disgraced columnist for Hearst newspapers who resigned under fire this week, claims in an interview that White House press corps bears some responsibility for the Iraq War.

Thomas, who quit after saying Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go to Germany and Poland, asserted in the interview posted yesterday by Vice magazine:

“Everyone rolled over and played dead at a time when they should have been really penetrating. … But in this case they bought all the propaganda. Or, whether they bought it or not, they took it and spouted it.”

Thomas, who is almost 90,  didn’t elaborate on her “rolled over and played dead” comment, which has the whiff of a gratuitous shot at her erstwhile colleagues.

She’s made similar comments before, claiming for example that the American news media were “comatose” in the run-up to the war. But seldom has she offered much in the way of specific, supporting detail. As in who “rolled over” when?

While her claims have hardened into something approaching conventional wisdom about pre-war coverage, Thomas’ views have been challenged, notably by David Gregory of NBC, who has asserted:

“I think the questions were asked [in the run-up to the war].  I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the president. I think not only those of us the White House press corps did that, but others in the rest of the landscape of the media did that.

“If there wasn’t a debate in this country,” Gregory has said, “then maybe the American people should think about, why not?  Where was Congress? Where was the House? Where was the Senate? Where was public opinion about the war?”

As to his last question, where was public opinion? It heavily favored the war in Iraq. And as I note in a chapter in my new book, Getting It Wrong, a Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken in the early days of the war found that 69 percent of Americans thought the invasion of Iraq was justified even if weapons of mass destruction were not found.

Reason magazine also has challenged the argument that the U.S. news media could have been more searching in the run-up to the war, asserting in a well-argued piece in 2007:

“The ‘we should have done more to head off this war’ argument assumes too much, exaggerates the media’s power to influence, removes the onus from politicians and infantilizes news consumers.”

Those are all good points. And blaming the news media does tend to deflect blame from Congress, which in 2002 authorized military force against Iraq.

What’s more, the content leading U.S. daily newspapers in the weeks before the Iraq War began included a sustained amount of searching coverage. A good deal of the coverage in February and March 2003 focused on diplomatic démarche at the United Nations, where the U.S. pro-war policy came under frequent attack by the French, Germans, Russians, and others.

Those challenges to U.S. policy were given prominence in U.S. newspapers, as were the massive anti-war demonstrations in Europe and in some American cities.

Thomas has never impressed me as a particularly incisive or even careful reporter. She notably indulged in media myth in her 2006 book, Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public.

The book repeated the hoary anecdote about Hearst’s vowing to “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th century–one of the media-driven myths that I debunk in Getting It Wrong.

Thomas’ use of the “furnish the war” anecdote helped Watchdogs of Democracy? make the tail-end of my lineup of the dozen overrated books about journalism history–a roster I compiled in 2009 for the quarterly journal American Journalism.

Topping my “overrated” list was David Halberstam‘s The Powers That Be, followed by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward‘s All the President’s Men and Hadley Cantril’s The Invasion From Mars.

About Thomas’ Watchdogs of Democracy?, I wrote:

“The title of Thomas’ book promises far more than its disjointed and repetitive content delivers,” adding, “don’t turn to Watchdogs of Democracy? for searching analysis.”

WJC

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‘Getting It Wrong’ goes ‘On Point’

In Cinematic treatments, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Media myths and radio, Spanish-American War, Washington Post, Watergate myth on June 3, 2010 at 8:52 pm

I was interviewed today by Tom Ashbrook, the engaging host of NPR’s On Point program, which is produced by WBUR in Boston.

We discussed Getting It Wrong, my new book about media-driven myths, and it was a fine show. (Audio is available here.)

As Ashbrook promised in his introduction, the conversation ranged over a variety of topics–or what he called “iconic media tales from the Spanish-American War to Hurricane Katrina.”

We were joined by Jack Beatty, the program’s news analyst, and discussed at some length the myth of the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, in which CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite characterized the war in Vietnam as a stalemate, supposedly prompting President Lyndon Johnson to alter his policy on the conflict.

We also took up myth surrounding the famous anecdote about William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of the 19th century, the dubious notion that Orson Welles’ 1938 radio dramatization of the War of the Worlds set off nationwide panic and mass hysteria, and what I call the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate, in which Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post supposedly brought down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency.

On the latter topic, I mentioned how the cinematic version of All the President’s Men, Woodward and Bernstein’s book about their Watergate reporting, has become the vehicle by which people learn about and remember the scandal.

Watergate was, I noted, “so complex that people these days, many years removed from it, find it hard to keep it all straight. … The high-quality, cinematic treatment of the Watergate scandal, featuring Woodward and Bernstein and the Washington Post in All the President’s Men, does happen to be the way that many people remember the Watergate scandal. …

“The movie’s a great movie,” I added. “But it helped to solidify the notion that the Post, the Washington Post, and Woodward and Bernstein were at the center, were at the heart, of uncovering the scandal.”

On Point featured questions and comments from a few callers–including a guy named Phil in Bowling Green, Kentucky, who said about me:

“I think the professor has got too much time on his hands. ” I chuckled.

He added: “I lived through most of that–the Watergate and Vietnam War.  I think he’s underestimating the persuasive attitude that Walter Cronkite had on this country. … Everybody’s opinion turned on what Walter Cronkite thought.”

But another caller, Gary from Nashville, Tennessee, weighed in, saying he disagreed with Phil from Bowling Green, offered the thought that public opinion about Vietnam turned not on the views of one journalist but on “the unrelenting reporting on the war by the media.”

It was a lively, substantive program that has generated a few dozen or so comments at the On Point online site.

The discussion made me recognize anew how deeply embedded and tenaciously held some media-driven myths really are, and how an hour-long program is hardly enough to encourage people even to think about giving them up. As Jack Shafer noted in his review of Getting It Wrong, “a debunker’s work is never done.”

But perhaps the show’s content will entice some listeners to buy and read the book. Even then, though, I suspect some media myths will prove resistant to thorough debunking.

WJC

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‘Good narrative trumps good history’

In 1897, Cinematic treatments, Furnish the war, Media myths, Reviews, Yellow Journalism on May 28, 2010 at 1:53 pm

The Shotgun Blog today quotes an excerpt from my recent review of Evan Thomas’ disappointing new book, The War Lovers, and offers this telling observation:

“A good narrative trumps good history about nine times out of ten.”

The Shotgun Blog excerpt carries the headline, “You Furnish the Myth, We’ll Furnish the History,” and includes this passage from my review of War Lovers:

“Thomas embraced the media-driven myth of William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to furnish the war with Spain–a vow supposedly contained in a telegram to the artist Frederic Remington, on assignment in Cuba” in 1897.

The Remingt0n-Hearst anecdote almost certainly is apocryphal, as I discuss in my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies.

I revisit the anecdote in the first chapter of my soon-to-be-published book, Getting It Wrong, which debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths—false, dubious, or improbable stories about the news media that masquerade as factual.

The Shotgun Blog’s observation about good narrative routinely trumping good history is worthy of rumination, as it does often seem to be the case. It is a topic that I address in Getting It Wrong.

A reason narratives like the Remington-Hearst anecdote triumph is that they are succinct, savory, and easily remembered–as are many media-driven myths.

The Remington-Hearst anecdote is almost too good to be false, a narrative so delicious that it deserves to be true.

The anecdote lives on “despite a nearly complete absence of supporting documentation,” I note in Getting It Wrong, adding:

“It lives on 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.

“It 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.

“Anyone reading U.S. newspapers in early 1897 would have been well aware that Cuba was a theater of a nasty war. By then, the Cuban rebellion had reached island-wide proportion and not a single province had been pacified by Spain’s armed forces.”

What pressed the “furnish the war” anecdote unequivocally into the public consciousness–what sealed the narrative’s triumph over history, if you will–was Citizen Kane, the 1941 motion picture based loosely on Hearst’s life and times.

Kane was not a commercial success, in part because of Hearst’s attempts to block its release, but the film is consistently ranked by critics among the finest ever made, as I note in Getting It Wrong.

A scene early in the film shows Charles Foster Kane, the newspaper tycoon who invites comparisons to Hearst, at his desk, tie untied, quarreling with his former guardian. They are interrupted by Kane’s business manager, “Mr. Bernstein,” who reports that a cable a just arrived from a correspondent in Cuba.

Bernstein reads the contents and Kane, who is played superbly by Orson Welles, dictates a reply that paraphrases Hearst’s purported vow.

Orson Welles

“You provide the prose poems,” Kane says, “and I’ll provide the war.”

Bernstein congratulates Kane on a splendid and witty reply.

Saying he rather likes it himself, Kane instructs Bernstein to send it at once.

WJC

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Media myths, the ‘junk food of journalism’

In Debunking, Furnish the war, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Spanish-American War, Washington Post, Watergate myth on May 26, 2010 at 9:14 pm

Media-driven myths, the subject of my soon-to-be-published book, Getting It Wrong, are prominent tales of doubtful authenticity—false, dubious, or improbable stories about the news media that masquerade as factual.

The  myths addressed and debunked in the book include the notion that two intrepid reporters for the Washington Post took down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency, that Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now television program brought an end to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch-hunt, and that newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst vowed to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of the 19th century.

“In a way,” I write in Getting It Wrong, media myths “are the junk food of journalism—alluring and delicious, perhaps, but not especially wholesome or nourishing.”

But why bother: Why devote a book to debunking media-driven myths?

It’s a question that, somewhat to my surprise, arises not infrequently.

Several answers offer themselves.

For one, there is inherent value is seeking to set straight the historical record. As I write in Getting It Wrong, “the effort to dismantle [media myths] is certainly worthy, if only to insist on a demarcation between fact and fiction.” That effort is aligned with a core objective of newsgathering—that of getting it right.

Media-driven myths, moreover, are neither trivial nor innocuous. They can have adverse consequences. They tend, for example, to minimize the nuance and complexity of historical events and offer simplistic and misleading interpretations instead. It’s effortless and undemanding to say the Washington Post brought down Nixon, that Murrow ended McCarthyism, or that Hearst plunged the United States into war with Spain. The historical reality in each of those cases is, of course, significantly more complex.

So media-driven myths distort popular understanding about the roles and functions of journalism in American society. They tend to confer on the news media far more power and influence than they typically wield.

Media influence, I write in the book, usually “is trumped by other forces” and further undercut by the traditional self-view of American journalists as messengers first, rather than as makers and shapers of news.

What’s more, the news media these days are too splintered and diverse—print, broadcast, cable, satellite, online—to exert much in the way of collective and sustained influence on policymakers or media audiences.

Thus, debunking media-driven myths can help to locate media influence in a more coherent context. Getting It Wrong offers the case that such influence tends to modest, nuanced, and situational.

There are occasions, though, when the splintered news media coalesce and devote exceptionally intense attention to a single topic—such as Hurricane Katrina’s rampage along the Gulf Coast nearly five years ago. The news media gave themselves high marks for their coverage of the disaster’s aftermath, especially of the federal government’s fitful response.

But as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, the coverage also was characterized by highly exaggerated reports of nightmarish violence and wanton criminality in New Orleans in the hurricane’s wake. The misreporting of the disaster’s aftermath, I write, effectively “defamed a battered city and impugned its residents at a time of their deep despair.”

Thus, another reason why debunking matters—media-driven myths can and do feed prejudices and stereotypes.

Finally, confronting media myths discourages the tendency to regard prominent journalists in extreme terms—as heroes or villains. Piercing the myth surrounding Murrow renders him somewhat less Olympian. Similarly, debunking the myth about Hearst and his purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain makes him seem less manipulative, and less demonic.

Getting It Wrong is a work with a provocative edge. Given that it takes on some of the most treasured stories in American journalism, it could not be otherwise.

WJC

This post first appeared at the University of California Press blog.

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‘A debunker’s work is never done’

In Bay of Pigs, Bra-burning, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, New York Times, Reviews, War of the Worlds, Washington Post, Watergate myth, Yellow Journalism on May 21, 2010 at 6:14 pm

So notes the inestimable media critic Jack Shafer in his review of my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong, posted today at slate.com.

And what a generous, engaging, and insightful review it is.

Under the headline “The Master of Debunk,” Shafer notes that “the only way to debunk an enshrined falsehood is with maximum reportorial firepower.

“Toting big guns and an itchy trigger-finger is American University professor W. Joseph Campbell, whose new book Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism flattens established myths that you were brought up to believe were true.”

Shafer’s review specifically discusses a variety of media-driven myths, including William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain; the so-called “Cronkite moment” that supposedly altered President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policy; the Bay of Pigs suppression myth that erroneously says President John F. Kennedy persuaded the New York Times to spike a story about the pending U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba, and the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate.

Shafer rightly points out that “a debunker’s work is never done” and to that end notes my recent post at Media Myth Alert about Evan Thomas’ new book, The War Lovers. The book embraces myths of the yellow press period in American journalism, including the Hearst vow.

Shafer thoughtfully considers the tenacity of media-driven myths, writing:

“Some myths endure because the stories are so compelling, like the Hearst tale and the alleged mayhem caused by Orson Welles’ [War of the Worlds] broadcast. Others survive because our prejudices nourish them (“crack babies,” bra burners) or because pure repetition has drummed them into our heads, smothering the truth in the process.

“The best tonic for the brain fever caused by media myths is an open mind and a free inquiry,” he writes.

Shafer wraps up the review by invoking this observation, by Jonathan Rauch:

“It is the error we punish, not the errant.”

Shafers adds:

“Of course when you do such a good job punishing the error, as Campbell does, you don’t need to bother with the errant.”

WJC

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