W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘Media-driven myths’

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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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‘Follow the money’: A made-up Watergate line

In Cinematic treatments, Debunking, Media myths, Newspapers, Washington Post, Watergate myth on November 6, 2010 at 6:52 am

“Follow the money” is one of the most memorable phrases of Watergate-era American journalism.

And it’s a made-up line.

That hasn’t prevented it from being invoked, as it was yesterday in a blog post at the online financial site, MarketWatch.

The item discussed how the Washington Post continues to be buoyed by its Kaplan education-testing service unit, saying:

“If Kaplan’s business ever went south, the Washington Post Co. would be in big trouble—and the flagship newspaper would likely become a shadow of its former self.”

No doubt.

The MarketWatch item closed by invoking the “follow the money” phrase, stating:

“The Post family had better pray that nothing unsettles Kaplan’s business. Kaplan is their lifeblood and future. As the Post preached during its glory days, the Watergate investigations of the 1970s, follow the money.”

The attempt to offer a cute closing line misfired. “Follow the money” never figured in the newspaper’s Watergate coverage–which is the topic of a chapter in my latest book, Getting It Wrong.

A search of the electronic archive of all issues of the Post from June 1, 1972, to October 1, 1974, the period embracing the Watergate scandal, produced no returns for the phrase “follow the money.”

The line, however, was uttered in the cinematic version of All the President’s Men by the anonymous and mysterious source code-named “Deep Throat.” The movie dramatized the Watergate reporting of Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and was based on their non-fiction book by the same title.

But the phrase “follow the money” doesn’t appear in the book.

As I noted in a blog post last month, the line was “kind of made up for the movie,” according to an item at the online site of National Public Radio.

That item quoted an NPR research librarian as saying that newsman Daniel Schorr once asked her “to find the phrase ‘follow the money’ in the book All The President’s Men.”

The librarian was further quoted as saying that she “went through the book page by page,” finding that the “phrase does not appear there.

“And then in talking to Bob Woodward and the screenwriter, William Goldman, Dan discovered that [the phrase is] actually kind of made up for the movie.”

I also noted that former Nixon speechwriter William Safire offered in 1997 a somewhat more detailed version of the anecdote, writing in the New York Times Sunday Magazine that Woodward and Goldman blamed each other for having invented the line.

“The screenplay was written by William Goldman,” Safire wrote. “When Schorr called him, the famed screenwriter at first insisted that the line came from the book; when proved mistaken about that, he said: ‘I can’t believe I made it up. I was in constant contact with Woodward while writing the screenplay. I guess he made it up.”’

Safire wrote that Schorr “then called Woodward, who could not find the phrase in his exhaustive notes of Watergate interviews. The reporter told Schorr he could no longer rely on his memory as to whether Deep Throat had said the line and was inclined to believe that Goldman had invented it.”

(New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote in 2005 that Goldman took credit for coming up with “follow the money.”)

The Post in an article last summer praised All the President’s Men, which was released in 1976, saying the movie had “held up not only as a taut, well-made thriller but as the record itself of the Watergate scandal that transpired four years earlier.”

The Post article also stated:

“It barely matters that the film’s most iconic piece of dialogue–‘Follow the money’– was never spoken in real life.”

How so, it barely matters?

It certainly does matter. The memorable, often-quoted but phony line is emblematic of the exaggerations that characterize the movie.

Far from being “the record itself of the Watergate scandal,” the cinematic version of All the President’s Men presented “a neat, tidy, and vastly simplified account” of the scandal, I write in Getting It Wrong. It’s a version “that allowed viewers to sidestep the scandal’s complexity while engaging in an entertaining storyline.”

The movie version helped cement the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate by leaving the inescapable but erroneous impression that Woodward and Bernstein were central to unraveling the scandal and to forcing the resignation of a president.

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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Turbulent times and the myth of ‘bra burning’

In Bra-burning, Debunking, Media myths on November 1, 2010 at 11:47 am

“Bra-burning,” I note in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, has long been a “convenient shorthand for describing the upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s” in America.

At the 'Freedom Trash Can'

The term, I write, is often “casually invoked as a defining phrase, or cliché, of those troubled times—as in ‘the era of bra-burning,’ ‘the hysteria of bra-burning,’ the time of ‘raucous bra burning,’ when there were ‘bra burnings across the land,’ [and] ‘the bra-burning days of the turbulent 1960s’….”

The Dunkirk Observer newspaper in western New York State yesterday added to that refrain, asserting in a commentary about women’s liberation:

“The 1960s and 70s witnessed some more turbulent times in this liberation movement, including bra burning and other forms of protest.”

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong–which debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths–the notion of bra-burning stems from the women’s liberation protest at Atlantic City on September 7, 1968. About 100 or so demonstrators gathered on the boardwalk there to protest the Miss America pageant as a mindless spectacle degrading to women.

Leaders of the protest have long insisted that no bras were set afire that day–or at any time as part of a women’s liberation protest. Robin Morgan, lead organizer of the Atlantic City protest, has asserted, for example:

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

However, Getting It Wrong offers evidence that bras and other items were burned–or at least smoldered–for a short time during the protest, a centerpiece of which was a burn barrel the demonstrators called the “Freedom Trash Can” (see photo, above).

Into the burn barrel they tossed such items as bras, girdles, and high-heeled shoes, as well as copies of Playboy and Cosmopolitan magazines.

My research, as described in Getting It Wrong, found a long-overlooked contemporaneous account in the Press of Atlantic City that said bras and other items in the Freedom Trash Can were set afire that day.

That account was written by a veteran reporter named John Boucher and published September 8, 1968, beneath the headline:

“Bra-burners blitz boardwalk.”

Boucher’s article, which appeared on page 4 of the Press, was separately endorsed years later by Jon Katz, who in 1968 was a young reporter for the Atlantic City newspaper. He also covered the women’s liberation protest.

“I quite clearly remember the ‘Freedom Trash Can,’ and also remember some protestors putting their bras into it along with other articles of clothing, and some [Miss America] Pageant brochures, and setting the can on fire,” Katz said in an interview with me.

“I am quite certain of this.”

Katz also said:

“I recall and remember noting at the time that the fire was small, and quickly was extinguished, and didn’t pose a credible threat to the Boardwalk.”

As I point out in Getting It Wrong, the witness accounts of Boucher and Katz offer no support for “the far more vivid and popular imagery that many bras went up in flames” in a bonfire on the Boardwalk.

At most, “bra-burning” was confined to that single occasion at Atlantic City in 1968. Even then, it was more akin to bra-smoldering than a fiery spectacle in which demonstrators twirled flaming bras over their heads.

WJC

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On Cronkite, Jon Stewart, and ‘the most trusted man’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post on October 31, 2010 at 11:37 am

Jon Stewart, the TV satirist whom the Washington Post calls a founding father of “fake news,” drew tens of thousands of fans to Washington, D.C., yesterday in an enthusiastic rally on the National Mall.

Stewart, TV comedian

Stewart of late also has invited improbable parallels to Walter Cronkite, the former CBS News anchorman who died last year. The Guardian newspaper in London the other day suggested an unlikely Stewart-Cronkite linkage, saying of the star of Comedy Central’s Daily Show:

“To some Americans he is the most trusted man in the US since the iconic news anchor, Walter Cronkite, told the country that the Vietnam war was a lost cause.”

While impressed by the turnout yesterday on the Mall, Media Myth Alert was struck even more by the over-the-top, “most trusted” claim.

For starters, the reference to Cronkite and Vietnam is exaggerated.

Cronkite, TV anchor

Cronkite, in a special report broadcast February 27, 1968, asserted that the U.S. military effort against the communist North Vietnamese was “mired in stalemate“–not that the war was lost. And as I note in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the “mired in stalemate’ assessment was neither notable nor extraordinary” by that time.

Indeed, nearly seven months before Cronkite’s program, the New York Times reported the war was “not going well” and that victory “may be beyond reach.” The report was published on the Times’ front page in August 1967, beneath the headline:

“Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.”

Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment hardly can be interpreted as an implicit claim that war had become “a lost cause.” Indeed, it’s striking just “how hedged and cautious” Cronkite’s remarks about Vietnam really were, I note in Getting It Wrong.

Cronkite, I write, “held open the possibility that the U.S. military efforts might still force the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table and suggested the U.S. forces be given a few months more to press the fight in Vietnam.”

But back to the Stewart-Cronkite comparisons.

The Guardian asserted that to “some Americans,” the often-sarcastic Stewart “is the most trusted man” in America since Cronkite.

Sounds impressive. But “most trusted” is  quite a dubious and slippery characterization.

Cronkite often was called the “most trusted man” in America. Supporting evidence for such a claim was very vague, however.

As the inestimable Jack Shafer pointed out in a column after Cronkite’s death, the “most trusted” epithet can be traced to an unrepresentative survey conducted in 18 states in 1972. The pollster was Oliver Quayle and Company, which sought to measure public trust among U.S. in politicians who were prominent at the time.

Cronkite was inexplicably included in the Quayle poll, meaning he was compared to the likes of Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie,  George McGovern, Edward Kennedy, and Spiro Agnew.

It obviously was a shaky and imprecise measure on which to build the claim of “most trusted.”

Indeed, the following year, the pollster Sindlinger and Company reported survey results showing that John Chancellor, anchorman of NBC’s Nightly News, ran slightly ahead of Cronkite in “trust and accuracy.”

As for Stewart, what’s the evidence’s that he’s now the “most trusted” man in America?

It’s likewise pretty thin.

In August 2008, the New York Times profiled Stewart in an article that carried the headline, “Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?”

The profile ran nearly 3,000 words–and nowhere after the headline does the phrase “most trusted” appear.

The Times article quoted Stewart as likening his job to ”throwing spitballs” from the rear of the room and as saying the mandate of his Daily Show program on cable television is to entertain, not inform.

Following Cronkite’s death in July 2009, Time magazine conducted an online poll that suggested Stewart was “trusted” more than any network anchor–easily outdistancing Katie Couric of CBS News, Charlie Gibson of ABC News, and Brian Williams of NBC News.

Time appended a disclaimer to the poll results, noting they were “not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those users who chose to participate.”

In other words, the results were useless for purposes of comparison.

But still, they attracted no small amount of attention.

Perhaps the Fresh Air program on National Public Radio has best taken the measure of Stewart and “trust.”  Fresh Air‘s characterization of the likable comedian?

“The Most Trusted Name in Fake News.”

WJC

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Why ‘War of the Worlds’ show didn’t panic America

In Anniversaries, Debunking, Media myths, Media myths and radio, Newspapers, War of the Worlds on October 30, 2010 at 12:54 am

Today’s the 72nd anniversary of the famous War of the Worlds radio dramatization, a show that was so realistic and made such effective use of simulated news reports that it pitched America into panic and mass hysteria.

That The War of the Worlds program created fear beyond measure on that long ago October night is a delicious tale, one inevitably recalled and retold with gusto as Halloween approaches.

The radio dramatization–the work of 23-year-old Orson Welles–was aired over the CBS radio network on Sunday evening, October 30, 1938.

As I write in my latest book, Getting It Wrong: “So alarming was the show, so realistic were its accounts of invading Martians wielding deadly heat rays, that listeners by the tens of thousands—or maybe the hundreds of thousands—were convulsed in panic.

“They fled their homes, jammed highways, overwhelmed telephone circuits, flocked to houses of worship, set about preparing defenses, and even contemplated suicide in the belief that the end of the world was at hand.

“Fright beyond measure seized America that night more than seventy years ago. … Or so the media myth has it.”

Getting It Wrong presents a compelling case that the panic and hysteria so commonly associated with The War of The Worlds program did not occur on anything approaching nationwide dimension. That it did can be called Halloween’s greatest media myth.

Some Americans may have been frightened by what they heard on Welles’ show, but most listeners, in overwhelming numbers, were not.

“They recognized it for what it was—an imaginative and entertaining show on the night before Halloween,” I write, citing data from surveys taken shortly after the program.

But newspaper reports appearing the day after the program advanced the thesis of mass panic had indeed swept the country. From coast to coast, front-page newspaper headlines  told of the fright, terror, and panic that the program supposedly caused.

Welles, the day after

“U.S. Terrorized By Radio’s ‘Men From Mars,’” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact,” declared the New York Times.

“Attack From Mars In Radio Play Puts Thousands in Fear,” said the New York Herald Tribune.

“Radio Fake Scares Nation,” cried the Chicago Herald and Examiner.

These reports, however, were highly anecdotal and the reactions they reported simply did not rise to the level of nationwide panic and mass hysteria.

Newspapers, I point out, “had no reliable way of ascertaining the validity of the sweeping claims they offered in their columns the day after the program.”

Here’s why.

The broadcast aired late on Sunday evening in the Eastern time zone, a time when newsrooms of most daily newspapers were thinly staffed.

As such, collecting the reactions to The War of The Worlds broadcast represented no small challenge, especially for morning newspapers having late-night deadlines, I note in Getting It Wrong, adding:

“Given the constraints of time and staffing, relying on wire services such as the Associated Press became essential.

“This dependency, in turn, had the effect of promoting and deepening the notion that panic was widespread that night: On a late-breaking story of uncertain dimension and severity, many newspapers took their lead from wire service dispatches. They had little choice.”

The wire service reports were roundups that emphasized breadth rather than depth. Reliance on the roundups helps explain the consensus among U.S. newspapers that The War of the Worlds program had caused mass panic.

It also helps explains the striking similarity that characterized newspaper coverage of the broadcast. Many anecdotes transmitted by the wire services found their way into  newspapers across the country.

One widely recounted anecdote told of a woman in Pittsburgh whose husband prevented her from poisoning herself. “I’d rather die like this,” she exclaimed, than fall victim to a Martian heat ray.

Also widely reported was the story of a woman who told the Boston Globe she could “see the fire” caused by the alien attack and that she and her neighbors were preparing to flee.

Newspapers in their coverage also tended to place considerable importance on the unusually large volume of calls placed that October night to their switchboards and to those of police and fire departments and local radio stations.

“The surge in call volume was routinely but mistakenly characterized by newspapers as evidence of widespread fright and hysteria,” I write, noting that call volume was a misleading marker of fear and alarm.

The increased call volume is in fact best understood as signaling an altogether rational response by people who neither panicked nor became hysterical. Instead, they sought confirmation or clarification from external sources–newspapers, ironically, as well as police and fire departments–known to be usually reliable.

“Moreover, the call volume surely included people who telephoned friends and relatives to talk about the unusual and clever program they had just heard,” I point out in Getting It Wrong.

WJC

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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

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Halloween’s greatest media myth

In Anniversaries, Debunking, Media myths, Media myths and radio, War of the Worlds on October 26, 2010 at 4:03 pm

My Q-and-A with Big Think blog was posted today. In it I discuss Halloween’s greatest media myth–Orson Welles’ famous War of the Worlds dramatization, which aired on CBS radio 72 years ago this week.

The War of the Worlds program was so clever, and made such effective use of simulated news bulletins reporting a Martian invasion of Earth, that tens of thousands–or even hundreds of thousands–of Americans were pitched into mass panic and hysteria.

Or so the media myth has it.

As I discuss in my new mythbusting book Getting It Wrong, “the panic and mass hysteria so readily associated with The War of The Worlds program did not occur on anything approaching nationwide dimension” on that long ago night in 1938.

While some Americans may have been briefly frightened or upset by Welles’ program, “most listeners, overwhelmingly, were not: They recognized it for what it was—an imaginative and entertaining show on the night before Halloween,” I point out in Getting It Wrong.

I discuss in the Q-and-A with Big Think just how improbable and unlikely it was that tens of thousands of people were panic-stricken by the radio show.

Think about it, I say: “Tens of thousands? Even hundreds of thousands? That sounded to me quite unlikely and highly improbable. Especially given that mass panic is such a rare phenomenon.”

I added that anecdotal news reports about reactions to the broadcast “simply did not rise to the level of nationwide panic and mass hysteria.”

I also pointed out that had there indeed been widespread panic and hysteria that night, “newspapers for days and even weeks afterward would have been expected to have published details about the upheaval and its repercussions. But as it was, newspapers dropped the story after only a day or two.”

No deaths, serious injuries, or even suicides were associated with the program. “Had there been widespread panic and hysteria,” I noted, “surely many people would have been badly injured and even killed in the resulting tumult.”

I discussed in some detail at Big Think what I call “the would-be Paul Revere effect,” which emerged as the The War of the Worlds show unfolded.

This effect occurred when well-intentioned people who had an incomplete understanding of The War of the Worlds broadcast set out to warn others of the sudden and terrible threat.

“These would-be Paul Reveres,” I noted, “burst into churches, theaters, taverns, and other public places, shouting that the country was being invaded or bombed, or that the end of the world was near. …

“The unsuspecting recipients of what were typically jumbled, second- and third-hand accounts had no immediate way of verifying the troubling news they had just received so unexpectedly. Unlike listeners of the radio show, they could not spin a dial to find out whether other networks were reporting an invasion. This second- and third-hand fright didn’t last long. It was evanescent.

“But it is interesting that the show caused some level of apprehension among many people who had not heard one word of the program.”

The “would-be Paul Revere effect” is a little-recognized subsidiary phenomenon of The War of the Worlds broadcast, a show that always is remembered at Halloween time.

WJC

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