W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘Vietnam War’

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Taking stock: Top mythbusting posts of 2012

In Anniversaries, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Error, Jessica Lynch, Media myths, New York Times, New Yorker, Photographs, Television, Washington Post on December 30, 2012 at 6:25 am

Media Myth Alert reported in 2012 on the appearance of many prominent media-driven myths and errors. Here are the year’s five top writeups, followed by a roster of other mythbusting posts of note.

■ Calling out the New York Times on ‘napalm girl’ photo error (posted June 3): The 40th anniversary of the famous “napalm girl” photograph — one of the most memorable images of the Vietnam War — fell in early June.

NapalmGirl photo_AP

Nick Ut/Associated Press

In an obituary a few weeks before, the New York Times had referred to the photograph of terror-stricken Vietnamese children and claimed, erroneously, that it showed “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes.”

That passage suggested U.S. forces were responsible for the aerial napalm attack that gave rise to the photograph, taken by Nick Ut of the Associated Press. I pointed this out in an email to the Times, noting that the bombing was a misdirected attack by the South Vietnamese Air Force, as news reports at the time had made clear.

The newspaper’s assistant obituary editor, Peter Keepnews, replied, and offered some baffling logic in doing so:

“You are correct that the bombing in question was conducted by the South Vietnamese Air Force. However, the obituary referred only to ‘American planes,’ and there does not seem to be any doubt that this plane was American –- a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, to be precise.”

As if the aircraft’s manufacturer was at all relevant in the attack.

Independent of my efforts, two former Associated Press journalists also called on the Times to correct its error about “American planes.”

The Times resisted doing so until late August, when it issued a sort-of correction that embraced Keepnews’ tortured reasoning and stated:

“While the planes that carried out that attack were ‘American planes’ in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not by American forces.”

It was, I noted, a begrudging and less-than-forthright acknowledgement of error. It hardly was in keeping with the declaration by the newspaper’s then-executive editor, Bill Keller. He asserted in a column in 2011 that “when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible.”

■ A  hagiographic treatment of the “Cronkite Moment” (posted May 31): Few media-driven myths are as tenacious and desperately held as the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite declared on air that the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam.

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

For years, journalists have sought to attach great significance to Cronkite’s assessment, even though it was thoroughly unoriginal and was, as I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, of little demonstrable impact. Even Cronkite, until late in his life, pooh-poohed its importance.

But all that scarcely deterred Douglas Brinkley from presenting in a hefty biography about Cronkite a decidedly hagiographic — and misleading — interpretation of the “Cronkite Moment.”

Brinkley offered little persuasive evidence in asserting that the “aftershock” of Cronkite’s report about Vietnam, which aired February 27, 1968, “was seismic” and “signaled a major shift in the public’s view of the war.”

In discussing the supposed “seismic” effects of Cronkite’s assessment, Brinkley wrote:

“Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page said, ‘The whole Vietnam effort may be doomed.’”

But the Journal editorial that  said so was published four days before Cronkite’s broadcast. To cite the editorial as evidence of a “seismic” effect of the “Cronkite Moment” was certainly misleading.

What’s more, Cronkite’s characterization of stalemate in Vietnam hardly “signaled a major shift in the public’s view of the war.”  Public opinion polls indicated that the shift had begun several months earlier.

If anything, Cronkite followed rather than led public opinion on Vietnam.

■ Uneven availability of WaPo’s online content about Jessica Lynch (posted April 27): On April 4, 2003, the Washington Post published a front-page report about an Iraqi lawyer who helped set in motion the rescue from captivity of Jessica Lynch, a wounded, 19-year-old Army private.

That report ran to 1,500 words and is freely available at the Post’s online site.

The day before that article appeared, the Post published an electrifying but far more problematic story about Jessica Lynch — an account that claimed she had fought fiercely against Iraqi attackers and had suffered gunshot and stab wounds before running out of ammunition and being taken prisoner.

Lynch_headline_Post

That article was published on the Post’s front page beneath the headline:

“‘She was fighting to the death.'”

It was a stunning report that proved wrong in all important details: Lynch was neither shot nor stabbed; she did not fire a shot in the attack in Iraq. She was badly injured in the crash of her Humvee in attempting to flee.

But try finding the “fighting to the death” story at the Post’s online site.

Unlike the far less embarrassing report of April 4, 2003, the “fighting to the death” story is not freely available online. Clicking on the story’s URL opens what essentially is an empty link.

Also unavailable online are the scathing reviews of the hero-warrior tale published by the newspaper’s then-ombudsman in April and June 2003.

Such inconsistencies suggest a digital scrubbing of embarrassing content. I asked the newspaper’s incumbent ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, about this matter.

He took several weeks to reply, finally stating in an email in August that he had found “nothing nefarious about this.” He added that the Post since 2003 “has gone through several changes of content management systems,” by which articles are posted online.

He further noted that the “fighting to the death” story about Lynch and related content are available in the Post’s fee-based archive.

So why not make the “fighting to the death” story freely available? Why not remove the fee to access a singularly memorable article about the Iraq War, a mistaken report that made Jessica Lynch something of a celebrity and gave rise to misguided suspicions that the U.S. military concocted the hero-warrior tale and somehow fed it to the Post?

“Restoring the digital version of the article of April 3, 2003, would represent a contribution to the record about the case of Jessica Lynch, which the Post is solely responsible for having placed in the public domain,” I wrote in an email to Pexton in mid-August.

He has not replied.

■ Kennedy-Nixon debate myth lives on (posted September 30): The run-up to the televised presidential campaign debates in October prompted numerous references to the purported lesson of the first such encounter, between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in late September 1960.

That lesson is about the presumptive power of the televised image: Supposedly, television viewers thought Kennedy won the first debate in 1960 while radio listeners felt Nixon got the better of it.

This notion of viewer-listener disagreement has become an enduring media myth, even though it was thoroughly dismantled 25 years ago by scholars David L. Vancil and Sue D. Pendell.

Dismantling, though, hasn’t destroyed the myth. The notion of viewer-listener disagreement remains hardy and irresistible.

For example, in the runup to the debates in October between President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, the founder of USA Today, Al Neuharth, wrote a column that recalled the first Kennedy-Nixon debate.

“Listeners,” Neuharth said, “generally gave Nixon the nod. But TV viewers strongly favored Kennedy.”

And the Chicago Tribune declared that “not everyone thought Kennedy had won the debate. Pollsters found that those who heard the radio broadcast thought Nixon won. … Television viewers experienced a different debate from radio listeners.”

Only one polling organization, Sindlinger & Company, had conducted a survey of any size that included a sub-sample of radio listeners. The Sindlinger survey, taken the day after the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, indicated that radio listeners felt Nixon prevailed, by a margin of 2-to-1.

But Vancil and Pendell, in their article in Central States Speech Journal in 1987, noted that the Sindlinger survey included more than 2,100 respondents, of whom just 282 had listened to the debate on radio.

They noted that “a subordinate group of 282 interviews is below the threshold normally required for a national sample.” Not only that, but only 178 of the 282 respondents “expressed an opinion on the debate winner,” Vancil and Pendell wrote.

Given the shortcomings of the unrepresentative Sindlinger sample, Nixon’s supposedly decisive margin among radio listeners dissolves as meaningless — and renders viewer-listener disagreement a media myth.

■ George Romney’s “brainwashing” — and Gene McCarthy’s retort (posted September 4): Mitt Romney’s ill-fated run for the presidency prompted reminders of his father’s failed presidential campaign in 1968 — a campaign done in by a memorably clumsy gaffe.

The gaffe, in turn, is said to have inspired one of the most devastating putdowns in American political history. But as my research has found, the context of the supposed putdown is unclear at best.

The gaffe was committed in late August 1967 by George Romney, then governor of Michigan and a presumptive leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968.

In an interview with a Detroit television reporter, Romney referred to his visit to South Vietnam in 1965 and said:

“You know, when I came back from Vietnam, I’d just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody could get. … Well, not only by the generals but by the diplomatic corps over there. They do a very thorough job.”

Romney’s claim that he had been duped into supporting America’s war effort in Vietnam suggested muddled thinking, gullibility, and an uncertain command of foreign policy. His abbreviated presidential campaign never recovered from the self-inflicted wound; he ended his  run for the presidency at the end of February 1968.

Sealing the gaffe’s unforgettable quality was the supposed witty putdown by Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy. Rather than a “brainwashing,” McCarthy supposedly said, a “light rinse” would have sufficed for Romney.

So telling was McCarthy’s “light rinse” quip that it “essentially finished Romney.”

But when, or even whether, McCarthy made the “light rinse” comment is unclear.

A database search of leading U.S. newspapers — including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Baltimore Sun — turned up no published reference to the “light rinse” quip in 1967 or 1968. Or for years afterward.

The first reference was in 1983, a column in the Baltimore Sun that did not say when, where, or to whom McCarthy uttered the remark.

It seems improbable that journalists in 1967 or 1968 would have failed to report a retort as delicious as McCarthy’s.

But that’s what An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968, a hefty book published in 1969 would have us believe.

American Melodrama described McCarthy’s remark as off-handed and said the senator’s aides persuaded reporters to hush it up.

While intriguing, American Melodrama doesn’t say when McCarthy made the comment, where, or specifically to whom.

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post

Other memorable posts of 2012:

, , , , , , ,

Lessons unlearned: Indulging in the ‘Cronkite Moment’ myth

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Quotes, Television on December 6, 2012 at 4:50 am
Johnson: Not in front of a TV

Johnson: Not at the White House

The wide applicability of the mythical “Cronkite Moment” — that occasion in 1968 when Walter Cronkite’s observations about the Vietnam War supposedly altered opinions of the president and the American public — is nothing less than astonishing.

The myth’s resistance to debunking is similarly impressive.

Just yesterday, for example, two media outlets in the American heartland invoked elements of the “Cronkite Moment” as if they were genuine, as if they were instructive.

The sports director of WHO TV in Des Moines, Iowa, asserted in a blog post that “Walter Cronkite didn’t oppose the Vietnam War initially, but when he started questioning what we were doing over there, public opinion turned – correctly – against the war.”

And an item posted yesterday at the online site of the Oklahoma Gazette  arts and entertainment weekly declared: “Lyndon Johnson once remarked that he knew he’d lost Middle America’s support for the Vietnam War when he lost the support of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite.”

Both are inaccurate elements of the larger, mythical interpretation of what Cronkite, the CBS News anchor, said about Vietnam and what President Lyndon Johnson said in reaction.

The “Cronkite Moment”  is the short-hand phrase for Cronkite’s editorial comment, offered February 27, 1968, at the end of a special report about the Vietnam War.

Cronkite said that the U.S. military had become “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam and suggested that negotiations eventually might offer to be a way out.

At the White House, Johnson supposedly watched the Cronkite report and, upon hearing the “mired in stalemate” assessment, suddenly realized his war policy had received a devastating blow. “If I’ve lost Cronkite,” the president is said to have told an aide, or aides, “I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or something to that effect.

Versions vary markedly.

In reality, Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired. Nor is there any persuasive evidence that he watched the show on videotape at some later date.

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, Johnson was not at the White House but in Austin, Texas, at a black-tie affair marking the 51st birthday of his longtime political ally, Governor John Connally (see photo, above).

At the time Cronkite was intoning “mired in stalemate,” Johnson wasn’t lamenting the loss of the anchorman’s support. He wasn’t wringing his hands or bemoaning that he had “lost Middle America.”

The president was making lighthearted comments 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.”

As for Cronkite’s assessment being so powerful as to shift public opinion — that, too, is mistaken: Popular views about the war had begun shifting months before the “Cronkite Moment.”

By October 1967, 47 percent of Americans, a plurality, maintained that U.S. military presence in Vietnam was a mistake, according to Gallup surveys. The plurality climbed to 49 percent, according to a Gallup Poll completed the day of Cronkite’s program about Vietnam.

So not only that, but Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” observation was scarcely  remarkable.

Or novel. Journalists had been using the term “stalemate” for months in commentaries, analyses, and news reports about the war.

For example, syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick wrote in August 1967:

“So long as the present ground rules obtain in Vietnam, this war will drag along its indecisive way. … [T]he condition is stalemate.”

Also in August 1967, the New York Times said in a news analysis that the war in Vietnam “is not going well.”

U.S. victory, the Times said, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

The analysis was published on the front page, beneath the headline: “Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.”

Not only did Cronkite’s views of the war lag public opinion, they trailed those offered by rival news organizations.

What, then, accounts for the tenacity of the mythical “Cronkite Moment”?

It’s an accessible tale, easily told and readily understood. It has broad applicability, as the myth’s appearance at WHO TV and in the Oklahoma Gazette suggest.

And it’s unreservedly media-centric: In a period of declining audience share and declining perceived influence, it’s reassuring to media practitioners that there were better, more powerful times when the likes of Cronkite supposedly told truth to power — and supposedly altered policy as a result.

WJC

Recent and related:

, , , , , ,

The subtlety of media myths: A ‘New Yorker’ brief and the napalm-attack myth

In Debunking, Error, Media myths, New Yorker, Photographs on November 19, 2012 at 6:53 pm

Media myths can emerge in blithe and subtle ways, as a brief item in the November 19 issue of the New Yorker testifies.

‘Napalm girl,’ 1972 (Nick Ut/AP)

The myth the New Yorker insinuates is especially pernicious: It suggests U.S. forces dropped the napalm that wounded and terrified a group of Vietnamese children — a moment captured by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut in one of the most memorable images of the Vietnam War.

In a brief retrospective review of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, The Birds, the New Yorker said a scene in that movie of “screaming schoolkids fleeing down a lonely road disturbingly presage[d] the iconic news image of Vietnamese children escaping from American napalm attacks.”

The reference to “iconic news image of Vietnamese children” running from “napalm attacks” points unmistakably to Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, which was taken June 8, 1972, not far from the village of Trang Bang, in what was then South Vietnam.

The centerpiece of Ut’s photograph shows a naked, 9-year-old girl screaming in pain and terror as she fled the attack.

The media myth associated with the image is that U.S. forces carried out the aerial napalm attack that terrorized and injured the children near Trang Bang.

But that interpretation — or, perhaps, the reflexive inclination to blame the American military — is in error: The napalm was dropped in a misdirected attack by the South Vietnamese Air Force, as news reports of the time made clear.

In the 40 years since, however, the erroneous interpretation has emerged not infrequently.

A notable example came six months ago, in an obituary published in the New York Times that referred to Ut’s photograph and said it depicted “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes: a group of terror-stricken children fleeing the scene, a girl in the middle of the group screaming and naked, her clothes incinerated by burning napalm.”

For weeks, the Times resisted correcting its error about “American planes” having carried out the attack, torturing logic as it defended its phrasing.

In reply to my email pointing out the error, the correction expert on the Times obituary staff, Peter Keepnews, wrote:

“You are correct that the bombing in question was conducted by the South Vietnamese Air Force. However, the obituary referred only to ‘American planes,’ and there does not seem to be any doubt that this plane was American –- a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, to be precise.”

As if the plane’s manufacturer were of crucial importance to the napalm attack. Which it wasn’t. The Times clearly had meant that American forces were responsible. Which they weren’t.

Finally, in late August, the Times published what I called “a sort-of correction,” invoking Keepnews’ baffling logic in stating:

“While the planes that carried out that attack were ‘American planes’ in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not by American forces.”

It was a begrudging, less-than-sincere acknowledgement of error.

Independently of my efforts, two senior former journalists for the Associated Press also had pressed the Times to correct the error about the napalm attack. They were Richard Pyle, a veteran AP correspondent who was the news agency’s Saigon bureau chief from 1970-73, and Hal Buell, a retired AP vice president who for years directed the agency’s photo service. (Pyle directed my attention to the New Yorker brief that alludes to the napalm-attack myth.)

In July, Pyle and Buell sent a joint letter by email to the Times, noting that the error, if left uncorrected, could solidify into wide popular acceptance.

Their fears were hardly unfounded — as the New Yorker’s movie brief suggests, in its blithe, almost casual invoking of the napalm-attack myth.

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post.

Recent or related:

, , , , , ,

‘Cronkite Moment’ morphing ‘into a general civic belief’? Why should it?

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Reviews, Television on September 9, 2012 at 4:06 pm

Robert MacNeil writes in today’s Washington Post that the presumptive power and influence of  Walter Cronkite, the former CBS News anchorman, “has morphed into a general civic belief.”

Let’s hope not.

Let’s hope the opposite effect is becoming more pronounced — that Cronkite’s presumed influence is slowly being recognized for the myth that it is.

MacNeil, the former co-anchor of the PBS News Hour program, takes up the notion of Cronkite’s power to move national events in a review of the Cronkite biography that came out at the end of May.

The biography, written by Douglas Brinkley and titled Cronkite, appeared for a short time on the New York Times list of non-fiction best-sellers.  I found the book hagiographic, especially its treatment of the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of late February 1968.

That was when Cronkite declared on the air that the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam and suggested that negotiations might lead to a way out.

But as I pointed out in my 2010 book, Getting It Wrong, Cronkite’s “stalemate” characterization was hardly novel and exerted little demonstrable effect on the policy or decisions of the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The myth also has it that Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” commentary prompted Johnson not to seek reelection in 1968.

MacNeil in his review notes the doubts about whether Cronkite’s assessment exerted much influence on Johnson but asserts nonetheless the “idea [that it did] has morphed into a general civic belief.”

It’s regrettable that MacNeil didn’t pause to consider the implications of the morphing, or reflect on why the myth of the “Cronkite Moment” is so appealing and so eagerly retold, despite the considerable evidence that can be arrayed in debunking it.

Cronkite himself (until late in his life) rejected the notion that his “mired in stalemate” assessment was all that influential, likening the effect to that merely of a “straw on the back of a crippled camel.”

Indeed, other news organizations in February 1968 were offering assessments far more pointed that Cronkite’s. For example, the Wall Street Journal said a few days before Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” commentary that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam “may be doomed.”

National political figures likewise were expressing downbeat opinions about the war that month. George Romney, then a long-shot Republican candidate for president, declared in mid-February 1968:

“We haven’t been told the truth about Vietnam. They’re winning; we’re not winning: we’re losing, thus far.”

Such observations obviously were more emphatic than Cronkite’s tentative “mired in stalemate” assessment.

And yet, MacNeil in his review favorably notes a passage from Cronkite, that “America asked for truth about Vietnam, and Cronkite dutifully delivered.”

Americans in February 1968 had many sources other than Cronkite for analysis about Vietnam — analysis that was far sharper and far less equivocal.

WJC

Recent or related:

, , , , , ,

A sort-of correction from the NYTimes

In Debunking, Error, New York Times, Photographs on August 28, 2012 at 9:09 pm

‘Napalm girl,’ 1972 (Nick Ut/AP)

It has taken more than three months, but the New York Times today published a sort-of correction of its erroneous description about the napalm attack in Vietnam in June 1972 that preceded the famous photograph of children terrified and wounded by the bombing.

The photograph, taken by Nick Ut of the Associated Press, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973. It is colloquially known as the “napalm girl” image.

The Times’ error appeared in an obituary, published May 14, about Horst Faas, an award-winning AP photographer and editor who spent years in Vietnam.

The obituary said the photograph showed “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes: a group of terror-stricken children fleeing the scene, a girl in the middle of the group screaming and naked, her clothes incinerated by burning napalm.”

But as I, and others, pointed out to the Times, the napalm was not dropped by the American military but by the South Vietnamese Air Force.

In response to my email sent in May about that lapse, the Times’ correction expert on its obituary staff, Peter Keepnews, wrote:

“You are correct that the bombing in question was conducted by the South Vietnamese Air Force. However, the obituary referred only to ‘American planes,’ and there does not seem to be any doubt that this plane was American –- a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, to be precise.”

Of course, the aircraft’s manufacturer was hardly at issue. And in the sort-of correction published today, the Times removed the reference to “American planes” in the digital version of the obituary but otherwise embraced Keepnews’ convoluted reasoning, stating:

“While the planes that carried out that attack were ‘American planes’ in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not by American forces.”

Which makes for a less-than-clean correction.

Indeed, the correction seems begrudging, half-hearted.

And less than sincere.

It’s as if the Times were saying the South Vietnamese Air Force was doing the dirty work for the American military — which by June 1972 was decidedly winding down its war effort in Vietnam.

Richard Pyle, a retired veteran AP correspondent who was the news agency’s Saigon bureau chief from 1970-73, characterized the Times’ correction this way:

“[T]he phrasing — ‘while the planes that carried out the attack were “American planes” in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not American forces’ — makes it sound like a bunch of teenagers borrowing daddy’s car.”

Indeed.

Pyle, who retired from AP in 2009, also had petitioned the Times for a correction in the Faas obituary. So had Hal Buell, a retired AP vice president who for years directed the news agency’s photo service.

In July, they sent a joint letter by email to the Times, pointing to the very real prospect that the error, if left uncorrected, could solidify into wide acceptance.

They wrote: “Our larger concern, beyond amending the immediate record, is that if left standing, this error will be repeated in future by the Times and any publications that might rely on it as a source, in effect causing a significant piece of misinformation to be cast in journalistic stone.”

The Times’ sort-of correction muddies rather than clarifies or fully corrects. The concerns that Pyle and Buell addressed are hardly set to rest.

The sort-of correction is disappointing, too, in light of the praise that the Times’ outgoing public editor, Arthur Brisbane, offered Sunday about the newspaper’s corrections staff.

Brisbane extolled the Times’ corrections desk as “a powerful engine of accountability” unmatched by similar operations at other U.S. news organizations.

The sort-of correction published today mocks such extravagant praise.

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post

Recent or related:

, , , , , , , , ,

Pardon the scoffing: NYT corrections desk is ‘a powerful engine of accountability’?

In Error, New York Times, Photographs on August 26, 2012 at 11:49 am

The swan song column of Arthur Brisbane, the New York Times public editor, salutes the newspaper’s corrections desk as “a powerful engine of accountability” unmatched by similar operations elsewhere.

Brisbane salutes ‘powerful engine of accountability’ (NYTimes photo)

Pardon my scoffing: A “powerful engine of accountability”?

The Times has been often and rightly lampooned for obsessing over trivial lapses while ignoring far more consequential missteps — as suggested by its ignoring repeated recent requests to correct its unambiguous error about the context of the famous “napalm girl” photograph taken in Vietnam in June 1972.

The image, taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, shows a naked child, screaming in pain as she fled an aerial napalm attack near a village in South Vietnam. The photograph won a Pulitzer Prize and remains one of the most memorable images of the Vietnam War.

In an obituary published in May, the Times referred to the image as showing “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes: a group of terror-stricken children fleeing the scene, a girl in the middle of the group screaming and naked, her clothes incinerated by burning napalm.”

But as has been repeatedly pointed out to the Times, the plane that dropped the napalm wasn’t American; it was South Vietnamese.

Among those who’ve called attention to the Times’ error are two senior former Associated Press journalists, Richard Pyle, the news agency’s Saigon bureau chief from 1970-73, and Hal Buell, a retired AP vice president.

Both men have petitioned the Times for a correction, stating in a joint letter sent last month by email:

“Our larger concern, beyond amending the immediate record, is that if left standing, this error will be repeated in future by the Times and any publications that might rely on it as a source, in effect causing a significant piece of misinformation to be cast in journalistic stone.”

Pyle and Buell also pointed to the Times’ inclination to police its minor errors, writing:

“Given the Times’ demonstrated commitment to correcting middle initials, transposed letters and other Lilliputian errata, it shouldn’t be asking too much for it to repair a factual error of greater magnitude.”

But the “powerful engine of accountability” hasn’t deigned to address the error, which insinuates that the U.S. military was responsible for the attack that preceded Ut’s “napalm girl” photograph.

By June 1972, however, most U.S. combat units had been removed from South Vietnam. For the American military, the war then was winding down.

Pyle and Buell, jointly and individually, have sought a correction, addressing email to Brisbane’s desk and elsewhere at the Times. I, too, have pointed out the Times’ lapse and in May received this frankly illogical reply from the newspaper’s assistant obituary editor, Peter Keepnews:

“You are correct that the bombing in question was conducted by the South Vietnamese Air Force. However, the obituary referred only to ‘American planes,’ and there does not seem to be any doubt that this plane was American –- a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, to be precise.”

As if the aircraft’s manufacturer were vital to the napalm strike by the South Vietnamese.

The Times’ failure to address the error hints at limited viewpoint diversity in the newsroom, a topic that Brisbane points to in his swan song.

He writes:

“Across the paper’s many departments … so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

“As a result,” Brisbane states, “developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.”

That description prompted a rebuke from the Times’ executive editor, Jill Abramson. But it’s a telling and doubtless accurate observation that Brisbane ought to have made more often during his two-year tenure as “public editor,” or internal critic.

Brisbane’s comment about “political and cultural progressivism” evokes an observation by the Times’ first ombudsman, Daniel Okrent. In a column in 2004, Okrent addressed what he called “the flammable stuff that ignites the [political] right. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others.

“And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.”

Brisbane’s comment also is evocative of one of the final columns that Deborah Howell wrote as ombudsman at the Washington Post.

She acknowledged in mid-November 2008 that “some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt [in mainstream journalism] are valid. Journalism naturally draws liberals; we like to change the world. I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did.”

She also wrote:

“There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.”

Howell’s column quoted the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel, as saying:

“The perception of liberal bias is a problem by itself for the news media. It’s not okay to dismiss it. Conservatives who think the press is deliberately trying to help Democrats are wrong. But conservatives are right that journalism has too many liberals and not enough conservatives. It’s inconceivable that that is irrelevant.”

I argue in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, that viewpoint diversity and contrarian thinking should be vigorously promoted in American newsrooms.

But the ideological imbalance of mainstream American journalism never receives much more than passing attention in mainstream American journalism.

It’s little wonder, then, that the believability quotient of leading U.S. news media continues to ebb: There’s a keen sense that they’re not dealing it straight.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 14 percent of respondents said they said believed “all or most” of what the Times has to say.

WJC

Recent or related:

, , , , , , , , ,

NYTimes ignores senior former AP journalists seeking correction on ‘napalm girl’ context

In Debunking, New York Times, Photographs on August 17, 2012 at 10:35 am

‘Napalm girl,’ 1972 (Nick Ut/AP)

The New York Times has ignored written requests by two senior former Associated Press journalists seeking the correction of an unambiguous error published in a Times obituary three months ago.

The journalists are Richard Pyle, a Vietnam War correspondent for nearly five years and the news agency’s Saigon bureau chief from 1970-73, and Hal Buell, a retired AP vice president who for years directed the agency’s photo service.

At issue is the Times’  mischaracterization of the attack that gave rise to one of the Vietnam War’s most memorable photographs — the “napalm girl” image of June 1972.

Update: The Times publishes a sort-of correction.

The centerpiece of the photograph, taken by AP photographer Nick Ut, shows a naked child, screaming in pain as she fled an aerial napalm attack near a village in South Vietnam.

In an obituary published in May about Horst Faas — an award-winning AP photographer and editor who helped make sure Ut’s photograph moved across the agency’s wires — the Times described the image as “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes: a group of terror-stricken children fleeing the scene, a girl in the middle of the group screaming and naked, her clothes incinerated by burning napalm.”

But as I pointed out in an email sent to the Times soon after the obituary was published, the aircraft that dropped the napalm wasn’t American; it was South Vietnamese.

The newspaper’s assistant obituary editor, Peter Keepnews, replied to me on May 22, stating in an email:

“You are correct that the bombing in question was conducted by the South Vietnamese Air Force. However, the obituary referred only to ‘American planes,’ and there does not seem to be any doubt that this plane was American –- a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, to be precise.”

As if the aircraft’s manufacturer were a crucial element in the napalm strike by the South Vietnamese.

I wrote about the Times’ error — and Keepnews’ illogical response — in a post in early June at Media Myth Alert.

Quite independently of my efforts, Pyle and Buell also called the Times’ attention to the error about the napalm attack.

Their requests for a correction have been ignored, Pyle said.

Pyle shared the contents of a letter he sent by email to the Times in mid-June, in which he noted that the Faas obituary “included a serious error, asserting … that the napalm bombs were dropped by U.S. aircraft.  In fact the planes were A-1 Skyraiders of the South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF), supporting a ground operation by South Vietnamese troops, in which there was no U.S. involvement.”

Pyle, a correspondent for AP from 1960 until retiring in 2009, also wrote that he was “dismayed to see the inclusion of an error that had first cropped up in a report about Nick Ut’s photo more than a decade ago, and which has required correction on several occasions since.

“It’s a classic example of how an error in print can be ‘killed’ repeatedly but never die.”

In a joint letter sent by email to the Times on July 22 and subsequently shared with me, Pyle and Buell reiterated that the error, if left uncorrected, may harden into wide acceptance.

They wrote:

“Our larger concern, beyond amending the immediate record, is that if left standing, this error will be repeated in future by the Times and any publications that might rely on it as a source, in effect causing a significant piece of misinformation to be cast in journalistic stone.”

They pointed out that they had separately sent letters by email to the Times but those letters “were simply ignored.” (The Times has not replied to an email I sent Wednesday, seeking comment about this matter.)

In their letter, Pyle and Buell also noted the Times’ earnest efforts to correct even minor errors and trivial lapses that creep into its columns, stating:

“Given the Times’ demonstrated commitment to correcting middle initials, transposed letters and other Lilliputian errata, it shouldn’t be asking too much for it to repair a factual error of greater magnitude.

“By clarifying this for the current record, you can also assure that it won’t be mindlessly recycled in future references to one of the Vietnam’s war’s most oft-published photo images.”

“Napalm girl” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for spot news photography.

(Full disclosure: I reported from Europe and West Africa for the Associated Press in the early 1980s but have never met Pyle or Buell.)

The Times’reluctance to address and correct this error evokes a couple of telling observations offered by media critic Jack Shafer, in a column for Slate in 2004.

Shafer wrote: “The rotten truth is that media organizations are better at correcting trivial errors of fact — proper spellings of last names, for example — than they are at fixing a botched story.”

He further stated:

“Individual journalists are a lot like doctors, lawyers, and pilots in that they hate to admit they were wrong no matter what the facts are.”

The Times’ unwillingness to acknowledge and correct its error about the context of the “napalm girl” image also brings to mind a sanctimonious pledge last year by the newspaper’s then-executive editor, Bill Keller.

He declared in a column in March 2011 that at the Times, “[w]e put a higher premium on accuracy than on speed or sensation. When we report information, we look hard to see if it stands up to scrutiny.”

Keller further declared that “when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible.”

That sure sounds good. Admirable, even.

But in fulfilling those high-sounding virtues, the Times fails utterly, at least in this case. And it is arrogant and dismissive in its failure.

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post

Recent or related:

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Further reason to pan Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Newsroom’: It embraces media myths

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, Reviews on June 26, 2012 at 6:19 am

Aaron Sorkin’s preachy new HBO series, The Newsroom, has, deservedly, received some harsh reviews.

Among the most delicious of those critiques was the New Yorker’s observation that The Newsroom is “so naïve it’s cynical.” And the New York Times said that “at its worst, the show chokes on its own sanctimony.”

Naïve and sanctimonious: Two solid reasons to avoid The Newsroom, which presumes to offer a behind-the-scenes dramatization of a high-pressure cable news program.

Another reason to pan the show is its embrace of hoary media myths.

The embrace of myth came late in the first episode on Sunday, when Sam Waterston, who plays cable news chief Charlie Skinner, offers advice to Will McAvoy, the prickly and thoroughly unlikable anchorman played by Jeff Daniels.

“Anchors having an opinion isn’t a new phenomenon,” Waterston/Skinner tells Daniels/McAvoy. “Murrow had one, and that was the end of McCarthy. Cronkite had one, and that was the end of Vietnam.”

The references were to Edward R. Murrow, whose 30-minute program on CBS about Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in 1954 is often but erroneously credited with bringing down the Red-baiting senator, and to Walter Cronkite’s 30-minute report about Vietnam in 1968 which is often but erroneously described as a turning point in America’s war in Southeast Asia.

Both tales are media-driven myths — compelling and prominent stories about the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as improbable or wildly exaggerated.

The Murrow and the Cronkite anecdotes are both addressed in my 2010 mythbusting book, Getting It Wrong.

I note in the book how Murrow was very late in confronting the McCarthy menace, doing so only months and years after other journalists had repeatedly directed attention to the senator’s bullying tactics and his ready use of the smear.

Among those journalists was Drew Pearson, an aggressive, Washington-based syndicated columnist who became a persistent and searching critic of McCarthy days after the senator launched his communists-in-government witch-hunt in February 1950.

That was four years before Murrow’s program.

Pearson’s scathing columns so angered McCarthy that the senator assaulted Pearson following a dinner party at the hush-hush Sulgrave Club in Washington in December 1950.

“Accounts differ about what happened,” I write in Getting It Wrong. “Pearson said McCarthy pinned his arms to one side and kneed him twice in the groin. McCarthy said he slapped Pearson, hard, with his open hand. A third account, offered by a radio broadcaster friendly to McCarthy, said the senator slugged Pearson, a blow so powerful that it lifted Pearson three feet into the air.”

That encounter certainly would be fodder for cable TV.

In any event, by March 1954, when Murrow turned his attention to McCarthy, the senator’s character and tactics were quite well-known.

“To be sure,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “it wasn’t as if Americans in early 1954 were hoping for someone to step up and expose McCarthy, or waiting for a white knight like Murrow to tell them about the toxic threat the senator posed.”

Thanks to the work of Pearson and other journalists, Americans knew.

Cronkite’s report about Vietnam aired on February 27, 1968, and closed with the CBS News anchorman asserting that the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” and that negotiations might prove to be the way out of the morass.

Those observations were supposedly so powerful and insightful that they have come to be known as the “Cronkite Moment.”

In fact, though, Cronkite’s observations were scarcely novel or revealing. By the time his report aired, “stalemate” had been used by U.S. news organizations for months to characterize the war in Vietnam.

Not only that, but U.S. public opinion had grown dubious about the war long before the presumptive “Cronkite Moment.”

Cronkite’s commentary did little to turn Americans, or the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, against the war.

Cronkite often said as much, likening the program’s effect on policymakers to that of a straw. (Late in his life, though, Cronkite came to embrace the purported potency of his 1968 commentary.)

So why bother about — and why blog about — the embrace of media myth on Sorkin’s tiresome, eyeroll-inducing show?

A couple of reasons present themselves.

The blithe, casual reference on The Newsroom to Murrow and Cronkite helps insinuate the media myths in popular consciousness.  It reinforces their tenacity.

Embracing the myths serves also to promote the “golden age” fallacy, the appealing but exaggerated belief that there really was a time when American broadcast news produced giants — hallowed figures of the likes of Murrow and Cronkite who, in the contemporary media landscape, are nowhere to be found.

It is an enticing notion. But it’s flawed and misleading — and vastly overstates the contributions, and opinions, of Murrow and Cronkite.

WJC

Recent or related:

, , , , , , , , , ,

40 years on: The ‘napalm girl’ photo and its associated errors

In Anniversaries, Debunking, New York Times, Photographs on June 3, 2012 at 8:47 am

‘Napalm Girl’ image (Nick Ut/AP)

Nearly 40 years have passed since an Associated Press photographer, Nick Ut, took one of the most memorable photographs of the Vietnam War — the image of a 9-year-old girl screaming in terror as she fled, naked, from a misdirected napalm attack.

In a recent retrospective article, the AP said the famous photo, taken June 8, 1972, “communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most divisive wars in American history.”

There’s no denying the stunning quality of what often is called the “napalm girl” image. But whether it helped “end” the Vietnam War is improbable: That’s an exaggeration, a case of locating far too much significance in a single image.

By mid-June 1972, after all, most U.S. combat units had been removed from South Vietnam. For American forces, the ground war was quickly winding down.

The “napalm girl” image figured in a recent New York Times obituary about Horst Faas, a gruff, German-born photographer who spent years in Vietnam, covering the conflict for the AP.

Faas won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work in Vietnam and, later, in Bangladesh. And he was instrumental in making sure the AP moved the “napalm girl” photograph across its wires.

The Times quoted Faas as saying in an AP oral history: “The girl was obviously nude, and one of the rules was we don’t — at the A.P. — we don’t present nude pictures, especially of girls in puberty age.” Even so, the Times wrote, Faas “set his mind on ‘getting the thing published and out.'”

Ut’s photograph won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

The Times’ obituary described the photograph as showing “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes: a group of terror-stricken children fleeing the scene, a girl in the middle of the group screaming and naked, her clothes incinerated by burning napalm.”

Except that the plane that dropped the napalm wasn’t American.

It was South Vietnamese (as the AP correctly notes in its recent retrospective, stating: “As the South Vietnamese Skyraider plane grew fatter and louder, it swooped down toward her, dropping canisters like tumbling eggs flipping end over end”).

By referring to “American planes,” the Times‘ obituary insinuates that U.S. forces were responsible for the napalm attack that preceded Ut’s photograph — and I pointed this out in an email to the Times.

The newspaper’s assistant obituary editor, Peter Keepnews, replied by email, saying:

“You are correct that the bombing in question was conducted by the South Vietnamese Air Force. However, the obituary referred only to ‘American planes,’ and there does not seem to be any doubt that this plane was American –- a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, to be precise.”

As if the aircraft’s manufacturer was at all central or relevant.

I said as much in replying to Keepnews.

“I think you’re too eager to avoid a correction, or a clarification,” I wrote. “The manufacturer (or ownership) of the aircraft is inconsequential; far more important is who was flying the planes. And the obit’s wording (‘bombings in the countryside by American planes’) clearly suggests the aerial attacks were carried out [by] Americans, and that Americans caused the deaths and injuries. And that wasn’t the case. The aircraft were American-made, but flown by South Vietnamese pilots.

“A clarification seems in order,” I wrote, “to make the distinction clear.”

Keepnews sent this brief, dismissive response:

“Thank you for your feedback.”

In reply, I pointed out to Keepnews that the brief bios the Times published of the Pulitzer winners in 1973 correctly said that Ut had taken the photo “after South Vietnamese dropped napalm on own people by mistake.”

Keepnews sent no response, and the Times has neither corrected nor clarified the erroneous reference in the Faas obit to the aircraft that dropped the napalm.

The Times should.

After all, Bill Keller, then the newspaper’s executive editor, asserted in a column last year that “when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible.”

It’s advice worth following.

WJC

Recent or related:

, , , , , , , , , , ,

A glowing, hagiographic treatment of the ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on May 31, 2012 at 8:41 am

The evidence that the mythical “Cronkite Moment” was of minor consequence is compelling and multidimensional.

The “Cronkite Moment” was the televised report in February 1968 when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite said the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.” Legend has it that President Lyndon B. Johnson was profoundly moved by Cronkite’s assessment.

Among the elements of the minor-consequence brief are these:

  • Cronkite said nothing about the war that hadn’t been said by leading journalists many times before. By early 1968, “stalemate” was a decidedly unoriginal way of characterizing the conflict.
  • Public opinion had begun shifting against the war months before Cronkite’s commentary. Indeed, Cronkite followed rather than led the changing views about Vietnam.
  • Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired on February 27, 1968, and remained publicly hawkish about the war in the days afterward.
  • Cronkite, until late in his life, pooh-poohed the notion his pronouncement had much effect on Johnson, likening its impact to that of a straw.

But little in the minor-consequence brief has kept historian Douglas Brinkley from offering in his new book about Cronkite a glowing, hagiographic interpretation of the “Cronkite Moment.”

Brinkley’s hefty biography is eager to find exceptionality in the “Cronkite Moment,” asserting that it “guaranteed” Cronkite’s “status as a legend.”

Brinkley, however, offers more assertion than compelling evidence in writing that the “aftershock” of Cronkite’s report about Vietnam “was seismic” and in declaring that the report “signaled a major shift in the public’s view of the war.”

As evidence of the purported “seismic” effect, Brinkley claims that Cronkite’s assessment “opened the door for NBC News’ Frank McGee to take a similar stand in a documentary on Vietnam that aired two weeks later.”

But as I point out in my 2010 book, Getting It Wrong, Cronkite’s “stalemate” characterization was “far less emphatic” McGee’s on-air remarks on March 10, 1968. “The war,” McGee declared on that occasion, “is being lost by the administration’s definition.”

So McGee’s interpretation wasn’t  “similar” to Cronkite’s at all; he didn’t hedge and invoke the safe characterization of “stalemate.” McGee said the war was being lost.

Brinkley also writes in discussing the supposed “seismic” effect: “Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page said, ‘The whole Vietnam effort may be doomed.'”

The Journal certainly said so — four days before Cronkite’s broadcast. To invoke the Journal’s editorial as evidence of the “seismic” effect of the “Cronkite Moment” is misleading, to say the least.

Brinkley’s writes that “Cronkite had grabbed America’s attention about Vietnam in a way that would have been impossible for Johnson” to have missed. But, again, supporting evidence is thin.

Did opinion polls at the time suggest that “Cronkite had grabbed America’s attention about Vietnam”?

Brinkley offers no such evidence.

Public opinion polling about the war did show that Americans had begun turning against the war by fall 1967, well before the “Cronkite Moment.”

Specifically, Gallup surveys found in October 1967 that a plurality of Americans (47%) said sending U.S. forces to Vietnam had been a mistake. That question was often asked by Gallup and was a sort of proxy for gauging popular sentiment about the war.

In August-September 1965, only 24 percent of Gallup’s respondents said it was a mistake to send troops. Thereafter, as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, the percentage of respondents saying the U.S. military presence in Vietnam was a mistake increased steadily, reaching a plurality in October 1967.

That moment was 3½ months before the communist Tet offensive across South Vietnam, an extensive and coordinated series of attacks that prompted Cronkite to pay a reporting trip to southeast Asia in early February 1968.

Brinkley, moreover, dismisses as insignificant the pronounced version variability that characterizes Lyndon Johnson’s supposed reaction to Cronkite’s report about Vietnam.

Depending on the source, the president is said to have said in reacting to Cronkite’s assessment:

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

Or, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.”

Or, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the American people.”

Or, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.”

Or, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the nation.”

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

Or, “Well, that’s the end of the war.”

Brinkley doesn’t interpret these varying versions indicating the apocryphal quality of Johnson’s purported reaction. He waves it off, writing:

“It doesn’t make any real difference.”

Oh, but it does.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, “version variability” of such dimension “signals implausibility.

“It is a marker of a media-driven myth.”

Indeed, if anyone’s words should be captured with precision, they  should be the president’s. Especially on matters as important as shifting popular support for war policy.

It is quite interesting that Cronkite never spoke with Johnson about the purported “Cronkite Moment” and, as Brinkley notes, the president had nothing to say about it in his memoir.

There’s little contemporaneous evidence that the “Cronkite Moment” was profoundly shocking or moving. Or seismic. But there are plenty of claims to its significance, years after the fact.

The “Cronkite Moment” took on importance not in 1968 but by 1979, when David Halberstam wrote in The Powers That Be that Cronkite’s report “was the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman.” Which was nonsense, of course.

But Halberstam’s over-the-top characterization signaled how the “Cronkite Moment” was becoming a memorable and supposedly revealing example about how journalists can have powerful and immediate effects, how they can bring to bear decisive impacts on major issues facing the country.

Even Cronkite embraced the presumptive power of the “Cronkite Moment.” It took him a while, though.

In his 1997 memoir, Cronkite characterized the program in modest terms, saying that his “stalemate” assessment was, for Johnson, “just one more straw in the increasing burden of Vietnam.” He repeated the analogy in the years immediately afterward, saying on a CNN program in 1999, for example:

“I think our broadcast simply was another straw on the back of a crippled camel.”

But in the years before his death in 2009, Cronkite claimed greater significance for the program. For example, he told Esquire magazine in an interview in 2006:

“To be honest, I was rather amazed that my reporting from Vietnam had such an effect on history.”

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post

Recent and related: