W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘Vietnam War’

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Mythologizing military service in Vietnam

In Debunking, New York Times on May 18, 2010 at 8:48 am

Today’s New York Times carries a potentially devastating piece about Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s dissembling about his military service during the Vietnam War.

Blumenthal, an odds-on favorite to win election this year to the U.S. Senate, told at least one audience in Connecticut, in 2008, that he had served in Vietnam.

“There was one problem,” the Times article says. “Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.”

Blumenthal in Marine Reserve (NYTimes)

The Times has posted at its online site a video in which Blumenthal refers to “the days that I served in Vietnam.” Moreover, the Times reported, Blumenthal in 1970 “landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam.”

Whether the disclosures are enough to ruin Blumenthal’s candidacy is uncertain.

But I wonder whether Blumenthal–who in nearly 20 years as attorney general seemed ever-eager to go before the television cameras to announce state-sponsored litigation–will be able to stand up to the scrutiny, which is sure to be intense over the next several days.

I knew Blumenthal, vaguely, during my time years ago in Connecticut, reporting for the Hartford Courant–which has to be keenly embarrassed that the Times scored this scoop, debunking Blumenthal’s claim.

Blumenthal always struck me in public as slick-haired, brittle, and ill at ease. Surprisingly so, given his frequent appearances on television.

My guess is that he’ll acknowledge a lamentable slip of the tongue and muddle on, a damaged and perhaps vulnerable candidate for a Senate seat that Democrats have held for 46 years. But I wouldn’t be surprised at all were Blumenthal to find the scrutiny too intense to bear, and step aside.

And with further disclosures about his mythologizing his wartime record, Blumenthal’s candidacy will be toast.

Many thanks to Jim Romenesko for linking to this post.

WJC

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Myth resurfaces in Cronkite-collaborator report

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Year studies on May 15, 2010 at 10:28 am

The Yahoo News report yesterday that venerable CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite may have quietly collaborated with antiwar activists in the late 1960s stirred a modest flurry of commentary in the blogosphere.

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

Few mainstream media outlets appear to have touched the story, which I find to be something of a stretch. An exception was Rupert Murdoch’s  New York Post, which carried a brief article, essentially a rewrite of the Yahoo report.

That report cited newly released FBI documents in saying that in late 1969, “Cronkite encouraged students at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., to invite Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie to address a protest [against the war] they were planning near Cape Kennedy (now known as Cape Canaveral). Cronkite told the group’s leader that Muskie would be nearby for a fundraiser on the day of the protest, and said that ‘CBS would rent [a] helicopter to take Muskie to and from site of rally.'”

Inevitably, the report recalled Cronkite’s famous on-air editorial comment delivered February 27, 1968, at the end of a special report on Vietnam. On that occasion, Cronkite declared the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”

A post yesterday at mediaite.com noted Cronkite’s 1968 commentary, saying it “is often credited with turning the tide of public opinion against the war.”

Cronkite’s commentary that night has become the stuff of legend. But it was scarcely so powerful or decisive as to much move public opinion.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my forthcoming book about media-driven myths, public opinion had begun turning against the Vietnam War months before the Cronkite program.

In October 1967, a Gallup survey reported that the percentage of respondents saying that U.S. military presence in Vietnam was a mistake had reached a plurality—47 percent. That was 4½ months before Cronkite delivered his on-air commentary. (In August-September 1965, just 24 percent of Gallup poll respondents said sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake.)

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

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

By late February 1968, Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment was, I write in Getting It Wrong, “neither notable nor extraordinary.”

I also note that Mark Kurlansky, author of a year-study about 1968, declared Cronkite’s view “hardly a radical position” for the time.

Cronkite’s remarks that night were fairly mild–certainly less emphatic than comments offered about two weeks later by Frank McGee of the rival NBC network.

“The war,” McGee declared on an NBC News program March 10, 1968, “is being lost by the administration’s definition.”

As I’ve noted previously, it is a bit surprising that McGee’s pointed editorial comments are not more often remembered.

WJC

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Cronkite, secret antiwar collaborator? Seems a stretch

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on May 14, 2010 at 3:44 pm

Yahoo’s online news site has turned up FBI documents claiming that Walter Cronkite, the venerable CBS News anchorman often if mistakenly called America’s “most trusted” public figure, offered advice and suggestions in late 1969 to foes of the Vietnam War.

Redacted FBI document on Cronkite (Yahoo News)

The Yahoo report, posted this afternoon, says the documents indicate that Cronkite offered “advice on how to raise the public profile of protests and even pledging CBS News resources to help pull off events, according to FBI documents” obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Cronkite died 10 months ago.

He made clear his mild opposition to the war on February 27, 1968, in a famous editorial comment at the close of a special report on Vietnam.  Cronkite on that occasion declared:

“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.“

Cronkite also suggested that negotiations eventually might prove to be America’s way out of the conflict.

The program that night became grist for a prominent media-driven myth, one of 10 that I discuss, and debunk, in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong.

Legend has it that at the White House, President Lyndon Johnson watched the Cronkite show and, upon hearing the anchorman’s dire assessment about Vietnam, snapped off the television set and exclaimed, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or words to that effect. Versions vary.

But as I point out in Getting It Wrong, Johnson wasn’t at the White House that night. And he wasn’t in front of a television set to watch Cronkite’s special report.

The president was in Austin, Texas, offering light-hearted banter at the 51st birthday party of a longtime political ally, Governor John Connally.

Today’s Yahoo report, while certainly provocative, seem to stretch credulity in important respects.

Cronkite, the Yahoo report says, “encouraged students at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., to invite Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie to address a protest they were planning near Cape Kennedy (now known as Cape Canaveral). Cronkite told the group’s leader that Muskie would be nearby for a fundraiser on the day of the protest, and said that ‘CBS would rent [a] helicopter to take Muskie to and from site of rally,’ according to the [FBI] documents.”

That Cronkite would even contemplate going so far as to arrange for the network to pay for a helicopter to take Muskie to the rally seems improbable.

The Yahoo report further quotes the FBI documents as saying the leader of an antiwar group in Florida said he spent 45 minutes on the telephone with Cronkite, discussing activities related to antiwar demonstrations in November 1969.

That Cronkite would spent that much time on the phone, offering advice to an activist, also seems unlikely.

And a comment posted today at the popular Romenesko online media news site offers an important reminder:

“Many Yahoo readers may be unaware that [FBI] files were full of nonsense and falsehoods by people seeking to curry favor, damage enemies, collect money and who otherwise had no interest in the truth of matters.”

The Cronkite-as-secret-collaborator story is delicious in what it suggests. Given Cronkite’s public views about the war, it’s perhaps faintly plausible.

But by no means can it be considered authoritative.

WJC

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Johnson was ‘panicked’ by Cronkite show on Vietnam?

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on May 11, 2010 at 1:28 pm

The flexibility and wide applicability of prominent media-driven myths is little short of astonishing sometimes.

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

Take, for example, the column in today’s Jerusalem Post, which invoked the often-told anecdote about the supposed effects of Walter Cronkite’s special report in 1968 about the Vietnam War.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my forthcoming book about media-driven myths, it is widely believed that President Lyndon Johnson essentially threw up his hands in dismay upon hearing Cronkite’s pessimistic assessment about the war.

Cronkite, the CBS News anchorman, said the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam and suggested that negotiations might be a way out.

Johnson supposedly realized the war effort was now hopeless, telling an aide or aides, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or something along those lines. Versions of what the president supposedly said vary markedly.

Today’s Jerusalem Post column offered another variation, saying that Johnson “panicked when he lost Walter Cronkite over Vietnam….”

Panicked?

What? How so?

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, Johnson didn’t even see the Cronkite report when it aired late in the evening of February 27, 1968.

Johnson then was in Austin, Texas, at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, one of his long-time political allies.

About the time Cronkite was intoning his downbeat assessment on Vietnam, Johnson was offering light-hearted remarks 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.”

No panic there.

Nor was there any in the days that followed.

I note in Getting It Wrong that even if Johnson saw the Cronkite program on videotape, the anchorman’s assessment represented no epiphany for the president.

About three weeks after the Cronkite program, I write, “Johnson gave a rousing, lectern-pounding speech in which he urged a ‘total national effort’ to win the war in Vietnam.”

So no panic there, either.

And on the day of the Cronkite program, Johnson offered a forceful defense of his war policy, vowing in a midday speech in Dallas there would be “no retreat from the responsibilities of the hour of the day.”

Johnson declared: “We are living in a dangerous world and we must understand it. We must be prepared to stand up when we need to. There must be no failing our fighting sons” in Vietnam.

“It seems inconceivable,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “that Johnson’s views [on Vietnam] would have pivoted so swiftly and dramatically, upon hearing the opinion of a television news anchor, even one as esteemed as Cronkite.”

It’s quite improbable.

So, no, Johnson wasn’t “panicked” by Cronkite’s assessment on Vietnam.

Not at all.

WJC

<!–[if !mso]> <!– st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } –> Johnson’s speech, the newspaper said, was “perhaps his strongest public call yet for unity in pushing the Vietnam war.”[i]

[i] Sell, “No Viet Retreat,” Los Angeles Times, 1.

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Cronkite ‘dissed’ Johnson? Think again

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on April 30, 2010 at 3:40 pm

When the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart weighed on the Apple-Gizmodo dust-up over the lost prototype of a next generation iPhone, it was akin to Walter Cronkite’s taking to the air to criticize the U.S. war effort in Vietnam in 1968.

Or so says an item posted yesterday at the  tech-news blog DVICE.

Stewart the other night called out Apple over the police search at the home of the Gizmodo editor who had blogged about the iPhone prototype, which an Apple employee reportedly had lost at a bar.

In a segment about the Gizmodo controversy, Stewart in mock lament asked of Apple: “Are you becoming the Man?”

He also said in skewering Apple: “I mean, if you want to break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for god’s sake? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone.”

In reaching–overreaching–for significance, DVICE said of Stewart’s segment:

“Is that a paradigm we feel shifting? It reminds us of when President Lyndon Johnson got dissed by Walter Cronkite in a scathing report on the futility of the Vietnam War, with Johnson saying, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.'”

Interesting analogy.

Trouble is, there’s no documented evidence of Johnson ever having said anything of the sort.

The Cronkite-Johnson anecdote is one of 10 media-driven myths that I address, and debunk, in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong.

The anecdote–often called the “Cronkite moment“–centers around the special report on Vietnam that aired February 27, 1968, on CBS. At the end of the program, Cronkite declared the U.S. military effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate” and suggested a negotiated settlement would be the only way out.

Legend has it that Johnson watched the program at the White House and, upon hearing Cronkite’s editorial comment, snapped 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.

But as I note in Getting It Wrong, Johnson wasn’t in Washington when the Vietnam special was shown. He was in Austin, Texas, at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally–and did not see the Cronkite program.

As such, I write:

Johnson in Austin, February 27, 1968

“Johnson did not have—could not have had—the abrupt yet resigned reaction that so often has been attributed to him.”

Moreover, I add, “Johnson’s supposedly downbeat, self-pitying reaction to Cronkite’s on-air assessment clashes sharply with the president’s aggressive characterization about the war. Hours before the Cronkite program, Johnson delivered a little-recalled but rousing speech on Vietnam, a speech cast in Churchillian terms. It seems inconceivable that Johnson’s views would have pivoted so swiftly and dramatically, upon hearing the opinion of a television news anchor, even one as esteemed as Cronkite.”

I further write in Getting It Wrong that even if the president had “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.”

So Johnson “got dissed” by Cronkite? One might say that, but Johnson didn’t care. Or even know about it. Not immediately.

And more important, Cronkite’s comments made no significant difference to Johnson and his Vietnam policy.

WJC

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Advance pub for ‘Getting It Wrong’

In 1897, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, War of the Worlds, Washington Post on April 28, 2010 at 3:47 pm

The online site of the School of Communication here at American University posts today a Q-and-A with me about Getting It Wrong, my forthcoming book that debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths.

Topics addressed include the Remington-Hearst/furnish the war anecdote; the War of the Worlds/mass hysteria myth, and the “Cronkite moment“/”I’ve lost Middle America” meme.

And while the topic is not considered in Getting It Wrong, I also mention the “pharm parties” myth, in which young people are said to take pills of any kind from their parents’ medicine cabinets. They supposedly show up at a party and dump the purloined pills into a large, common bowl. Then they are purported to take turns scooping out and swallowing handfuls of the medications, not knowing what they’re taking, in the supposed pursuit of a drug-induced high.

Jack Shafer, media critic for slate.com, has done fine work in knocking down the “pharm party” meme.

Here are excerpts from the Q-and-A:

Q: “Myth busting” can upset people who have accepted, or even benefited from, the myth. Have you gotten any negative feedback?

A:  Not really. Not so far. I do know that some people wonder “who cares?” about some of the myths debunked in Getting It Wrong. The Hearst—”furnish the war” myth, after all, is more than 100 years old. But I emphasize in the book that media-driven myths are neither innocuous nor trivial. They can, and do, promote stereotypes. They can deflect attention or blame away from the makers of flawed policies. They can, and often do, offer an exaggerated sense of the power and influence of the news media. Plus, debunking myths is a pursuit that’s aligned with a fundamental objective of mainstream American journalism—that of getting it right.

Q: What’s next?

A: I’d like to think there’s a sequel to Getting It Wrong. The universe of media-driven myths isn’t confined to 10, after all. There are more to confront. Also, in fall 2010, I’ll be teaching a “wild card” course in the University’s General Education program titled “Media Myth and Power.” The course will consider several of the myths debunked in Getting It Wrong.

A tip of the chapeau to Michael Wargo of the School of Communication for putting together the Q-and-A, which follows the writeup about the book that appeared April 11 in the “Outlook” section of the Washington Post.

WJC

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Halberstam the ‘unimpeachable’? Try myth-promoter

In Bay of Pigs, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, New York Times, Spanish-American War on April 24, 2010 at 9:02 am

A book review in the New York Times the other day referred to David Halberstam, the legendary author and journalist, as an “unimpeachable” source.

Halberstam, who died in an automobile accident three years ago, certainly built an outsize reputation. But unimpeachable?

I’d say no way.

Halberstam, in his hefty and still-popular 1979 study of the news media, The Powers That Be, encouraged the rise of two prominent media-driven myths and endorsed a third.

As I note in Getting It Wrong, my forthcoming book about media-driven myths, Halberstam’s Powers That Be was an important source, perhaps the original source, for the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of February 27, 1968.

That was when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite asserted in a special report that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”

In Halberstam’s telling, Cronkite’s report represented “the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman.”

Halberstam wrote that President Lyndon Johnson was in Washington and watched the Cronkite special that night. Upon hearing Cronkite’s dire assessment about Vietnam, the president said that if he had lost Cronkite, he had lost Mr. Average Citizen.

Interestingly, Halberstam did not place Johnson’s purported lament inside quotation marks. He paraphrased the remarks and said Johnson had directed  them to presidential press secretary George Christian.

But as I write in Getting It Wrong, Johnson was not in Washington that night. He did not see the Cronkite program when it aired. Thus, he could not have had the abrupt, dramatic, yet resigned reaction that Halberstam, and others, have attributed to him.

Johnson that night was in Austin, Texas, at the 51st birthday party of a political ally, Governor John Connally.

About the time Johnson supposedly made the comment about losing Cronkite, he was offering light-hearted banter about Connally’s age, saying:

“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.”

The “Cronkite Moment,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “is a media-driven myth. It did not have the effects that Halberstam and many others have attributed to it.”

Halberstam’s Powers That Be also offered a graphic, if exaggerated, account that President John Kennedy supposedly called James Reston of the New York Times in April 1961 and urged him not to publish a report about the pending Bay of Pigs invasion.

Kennedy “argued strongly and passionately,” Halberstam wrote, that the Times by reporting the story would damage his policy. Halberstam also wrote that in his call to Reston, Kennedy said the Times risked having blood on its hands were the article published and the invasion failed.

Such a conversation never happened, according to Reston and others quoted in Harrison Salisbury’s insider’s account of the Times, Without Fear or Favor.

Indeed, there is no evidence that Kennedy called anyone at the Times in advance of the report–which was written by Tad Szulc and published April 7, 1961, on the Times front page (see right).

As I note in Getting It Wrong:

“The Kennedy Library in Boston says that the White House telephone logs reveal no calls were placed to Reston” or other Times executives on April 6, 1961, the day the story was prepared for publication.

“Moreover,” I note, “Kennedy had almost no chance to speak with those executives during the interval from when Szulc’s story arrived at the Times building in midtown Manhattan and when it was set in type. … During that time, Kennedy was otherwise preoccupied. He spent the last half of the afternoon of April 6, 1961, playing host to Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister, on a lengthy cruise down the Potomac River to Mount Vernon.”

In addition, Halberstam’s Powers That Be invoked one of the most enduring media myths–the anecdote about William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of the 19th century.

That anecdote is revisited, and dismantled, in the first chapter of Getting It Wrong.

The Powers That Be was a popular success, reaching the second spot on the New York Times best-selling list in May 1979. But the book wasn’t without persuasive critics.

Among them was David Culbert, an historian at Louisiana State University who years ago raised questions about the “Cronkite Moment,” noting that Johnson was in Texas when the program aired.

In a devastating review published in the American Historical Review, Culbert called The Powers That Be overlong and declared:

“The absence of a developed thesis, lack of proper documentation, and numerous errors of fact for events before the 1960s suggest that historians will have to use this book with caution. There is much here that might be true and, if true, valuable, but there is also no certainty that sloppy research does not undermine the very parts that seem most interesting.”

WJC

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One paragraph, three myths

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, New York Times, Washington Post, Watergate myth on April 21, 2010 at 11:45 am

A column posted today at a Canadian online news site achieved the feat of working three media-driven myths into a single paragraph.

Here’s what the columnist wrote, in a paean to the power and influence that traditional news media once wielded, supposedly:

“A Walter Cronkite could, however belatedly, expose the pointlessness of Vietnam. Famously, Edward R. Murrow deflated McCarthy. A pair of scruffy reporters could bring down a Nixon.”

Three sentences, three myths–a trifecta that is very rare.

All three media-driven myths are addressed, and debunked, in my book, Getting It Wrong, to be published in summer by the University of California Press.

The reference to Cronkite is to the CBS anchorman’s report of February 27, 1968, in which he said the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam. As I write in Getting It Wrong, such a characterization was scarcely original or exceptional at the time. It was no exposé.

Indeed, nearly seven months before Cronkite’s pronouncement, the New York Times had suggested in a front-page report that the war was stalemated.

Victory in Vietnam, the Times report said, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

That Murrow “deflated” Senator Joseph R. McCarthy is another media myth, stemming from Murrow’s See It Now television program of March 9, 1954.

Murrow in fact was quite belated in confronting McCarthy and the senator’s communists-in-government witch hunt.

The half-hour See It Now program on McCarthy came many months–even years–after other journalists had pointedly challenged the senator and his bullying tactics. Eric Sevareid, a friend and CBS colleague of Murrow, pointedly noted that Murrow’s program “came very late in the day.”

In an interview in 1978, Sevareid said: “The youngsters read back and they think only one person in broadcasting and the press stood up to McCarthy and this has made a lot of people feel very upset, including me, because that program came awfully late.”

And by the time Murrow’s report aired, McCarthy’s favorable ratings had been in decline for three months, as also I note in Getting It Wrong.

The Canadian columnist’s reference to “a pair of scruffy reporters” who supposedly brought down Richard Nixon is, of course, to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who covered the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post.

As I’ve noted in previous posts at MediaMythAlert, the notion that the reporters brought down Nixon and his corrupt presidency is a myth that even the Post has tried to dismiss.

Howard Kurtz, the newspaper’s media reporter, wrote in 2005, for example:

“Despite the mythology, The Post didn’t force Richard Nixon from office—there were also two special prosecutors, a determined judge, bipartisan House and Senate committees, the belated honesty of [former White House lawyer] John Dean and those infamous White House tapes.”

Kurtz’s observations parallel those of Stanley I. Kutler, a leading historian of the  Watergate scandal, who has written:

“The fact is, an incredible array of powerful actors all converged on Nixon at once—the FBI, prosecutors, congressional investigators, the judicial system.”

The three myths are stories well-known and even cherished in American journalism. They almost always are cited as examples of media power and influence, of journalists at their courageous best.

But as I write in Getting It Wrong:

“To identify these tales as media myths is to confront the reality that the news media are not the powerful agents they, and many others, assume them to be.”

WJC

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In today’s ‘Outlook’ section

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Newspapers, Washington Post, Watergate myth on April 11, 2010 at 12:13 pm

An abbreviated version of my recent guestpost at the “Political Bookworm” blog appeared today in the “Outlook” section of the Washington Post.

Here’s the text of the “Outlook” piece, with links that I’ve added:

W. Joseph Campbell, a professor of communication at American University, busts some media myths in his book, “Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism,” coming in July from the University of California Press. Here are three of Campbell’s biggies:

1. William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow, telegraphed to the artist Frederic Remington in Cuba, to “furnish the war” with Spain. Hearst denied making such a statement. The telegram containing his purported pledge has never turned up. The “furnish the war” anecdote can be traced to 1901 and a memoir by another journalist, James Creelman, who did not say when or how he learned the story about Hearst’s vow.

2. Edward R. Murrow brought an end to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch hunt. This myth stems from Murrow’s CBS program “See It Now” on March 9, 1954, when the newsman dissected McCarthy’s crude investigative techniques and taste for the half-truth — none of which was unknown to American audiences at the time. The myth took hold even though years before the program aired, several prominent journalists — including Washington-based syndicated columnist Drew Pearson — had become searching critics of McCarthy and his tactics.

Nixon resigns, 1974

3. The Washington Post’s investigative reporting brought down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency. Katharine Graham, The Post’s publisher during the Watergate period, said in 1997: “Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.” She was right, but the complexities of Watergate are not readily recalled these days. What does stand out is a media-centric interpretation that the dogged reporting of Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought Nixon down.

WJC

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Now at Political Bookworm, where ‘must-read books are discovered’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on April 9, 2010 at 7:35 am

I guestpost today at the Political Bookworm, a Washington Post-sponsored site that describes itself as a blog where “tomorrow’s must-read political books are discovered today.”

In my post, I discuss three of the media-driven myths examined in my forthcoming book, Getting It Wrong, which the University of California Press will publish in the summer.

Political Bookworm is edited by Steven Levingston, the Post‘s nonfiction editor. The blog notes that it “discusses new books long before they hit the shelves.”

And here’s the text of my guest post:

The most famous anecdote in American journalism may be William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow, telegraphed to the artist Frederic Remington in Cuba, to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of the 19th century.

Or it may be Edward R. Murrow’s television program on CBS in 1954, which supposedly brought an end to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch-hunt.

Or it may be the interpretation of Watergate that says The Washington Post’s investigative reporting brought down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency.

All three are well-known stories about the exercise of media power, for good or bad. All three anecdotes are often retold.

All three are media-driven myths.

Media myths often confer on the news media far more power and influence than they merit or possess. Media myths also tend to minimize the complexity of historical events in favor of simplistic and misleading interpretations.

That’s an important reason why Hearst’s vow has lived on for more than 100 years: It is succinct, savory, and easily remembered. It conforms to the popular image of Hearst as war-monger.

Hearst, though, denied making such a statement. The telegram containing his purported pledge has never turned up. And it would have been absurd for Hearst to vow to “furnish the war” because war — Cuba’s rebellion against Spain’s colonial rule — was the reason he sent Remington to Cuba. (The Cuban rebellion gave rise in 1898 to the Spanish-American War.)

The “furnish the war” anecdote can be traced to 1901 and a memoir by another journalist, James Creelman, who did not say when or how he learned story about Hearst’s vow.

The Murrow-McCarthy myth stems from Murrow’s See It Now program on March 9, 1954. See It Now that night dissected McCarthy’s crude investigative techniques and taste for the half-truth — none of which was unknown to American audiences at the time

Years before the program aired, several prominent journalists — including the Washington-based syndicated columnist Drew Pearson — had become searching critics of McCarthy and his tactics.

Interestingly, the myth took hold despite Murrow’s protests. In the weeks following the See It Now program, Murrow said he recognized that at best he had reinforced what others had long said about the red-baiting senator.

Similarly, principals at The Washington Post over the years have disputed the notion their newspaper toppled Nixon, who resigned in 1974. Among them was Katharine Graham, the Post’s publisher during the Watergate period. “Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do,” she said in 1997. “The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.”

She was right, but the complexities of Watergate — the deceit and criminality that characterized the Nixon White House and the multiple lines of investigation that slowly unwound the scandal — are not readily recalled these days.

What does stand out is a media-centric interpretation, that the dogged reporting of Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought Nixon down. It’s a familiar storyline, a proxy for grasping Watergate’s essence while sidestepping its complexities.

That storyline was solidified by the 1976 motion picture, “All the President’s Men,” the screen adaptation of Bernstein and Woodward’s book of the same title. The film casts the reporters as central to unraveling the scandal.

Debunking these and other media myths matters for a variety of reasons. Media myths can and do feed stereotypes. They distort our understanding of the news media and of history. And there is inherent value in setting the record straight.

In that sense, myth-busting is aligned with a central objective of newsgathering — that of getting it right.

WJC