All the News Unfit to Print

Eric Burns

Description

You really can't believe everything you read . . .

A premature newswire report announces the end of World War I, spurring wild celebrations in American streets days before the actual treaty was signed. A St. Louis newspaper prints reviews of theatrical performances that never took place—they had been canceled due to bad weather. New York newspaper reporters plant evidence in the apartment of the man accused of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby and then call him a liar in the courtroom once the trial begins.

These are just a few of the many wrongs that have been reported as right over two centuries of American history. All the News Unfit to Print puts the media under the microscope to expose the many types of mistakes, hoaxes, omissions, and lies that have skewed our understanding of the past, and reveals the range of reasons and motivations—from boredom and haste to politics and greed-behind them. Reviewing a host of journalistic slip-ups involving Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, William Randolph Hearst, Theodore H. White, and many others, this book covers the stories behind the stories to refine incorrect "first drafts" of history from the Revolutionary War era to more recent times.

"All the News Unfit to Print is a rollicking joyride that careens through the ridiculous, the odd, and the serious malfeasances in American journalistic history and reminds us of the difference between news and facts."
—Neal Gabler, author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination
Part One: Telling Lies.

1. How Journalists Got the Idea.

2. Journalism from Afar.

3. A Woman Who Never Was.

4. Lies against the British.

5. Lies against Americans.

6. The Boss.

7. The Epoch of the Hoax.

8. Furnishing a War.

9. L’Affaire.

10. Speeding Up a War.

Part Two Hiding the Truth.

11. Their Man in Moscow.

12. Sins of Omission.

13. The Same Team.

14. Rejecting the Faith.

15. Janet’s World.

16. What a Picture Is Worth.

17. The Most Hated Man in American Newsrooms.

18. What Haste Makes.

Epilogue: A Few Final Mistakes.

A Note to Readers.

Acknowledgments.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Sujets

• History
• United States
• World War I
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 18 mai 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470730157
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
ALSO BY ERIC BURNS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
 
PART ONE - Telling Lies
 
Chapter 1 - How Journalists Got the Idea
Chapter 2 - Journalism from Afar
Chapter 3 - A Woman Who Never Was
Chapter 4 - Lies against the British
Chapter 5 - Lies against Americans
Chapter 6 - The Boss
Chapter 7 - The Epoch of the Hoax
Chapter 8 - Furnishing a War
Chapter 9 - L’Affaire
Chapter 10 - Speeding Up a War
 
PART TWO - Hiding the Truth
Chapter 11 - Their Man in Moscow
Chapter 12 - Sins of Omission
Chapter 13 - The Same Team
Chapter 14 - Rejecting the Faith
Chapter 15 - Janet’s World
Chapter 16 - What a Picture Is Worth
Chapter 17 - The Most Hated Man in American Newsrooms
Chapter 18 - What Haste Makes
 
Epilogue
A Note to Readers
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ALSO BY ERIC BURNS
Nonfiction
Broadcast Blues
The Joy of Books
The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol
Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy
Beginnings of American Journalism
The Smoke of the Gods: A Social History of Tobacco
Virtue, Valor and Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame
 
 
Fiction
The Autograph: A Modern Fable of a Father and a Daughter
 
 
Play
Mid-Strut

Copyright © 2009 by Eric Burns. All rights reserved
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
 
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Burns, Eric.
All the news unfit to print : how things were . . . and how they were reported / Eric Burns.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-0-470-73015-7
1. Journalism—Objectivity. 2. History, Modern—19th century. 3. History, Modern—20th century. I. Title.
PN4784.O24B88 2009 070.9—dc22 2008045524
For Dianne, Toby, and Cailin, always, all ways
PART ONE
Telling Lies
U SUALLY WHEN PEOPLE SAY THAT JOURNALISM IS THE FIRST draft of history, they are praising reporters for laying a foundation of knowledge that will last the ages. But there is another way to interpret the sentiment—as a warning to historians to build on firmer ground.
This was especially true in the late seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth, when journalism as we know it today was such a novelty that readers were not quite sure what to make of it. Most Europeans and Americans of the time were citizens of a world that seemed so small it did not encourage curiosity, a world “in which news could not thrive as a commodity because it barely existed as a concept.” Which is to say that, the occasional explorer or trader notwithstanding, the lives people lived were narrow ones. They were concerned with their own families, their own farms and shops, their own relationship to the Almighty. What else was there? Of what possible interest could occurrences outside his daily realm be to a man? How could they affect his loved ones, his occupation, his nightly communication with his Maker? And how could a person who worked from dawn until dusk find the time to read a newspaper even if he wanted to? The few moments left at the end of the day for reading would be devoted to the word of God, not the word of a fellow sinner who happened to own a printing press.
It was attitudes like these that were the basis and curse of modern journalism, and it took centuries for them to change, a process so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. And because of these attitudes, many of the men who worked for newspapers in the past did not take their occupation seriously. Put simply, if the readers were not dedicated to the product, why should the writers be? The latter wanted to earn a living, and on occasion have a lark, more than they wanted to provide the historical record on which future generations would depend.
As a result, that record has often been riddled with errors, omissions, and pranks. Historians have had to seek sources other than newspapers in their quest for accuracy: letters to and from the principal figures in a certain event, letters referring to the principals from both supporters and opponents, documents produced by lawmaking bodies, artifacts of various kinds, and archaeological and geological records, to name but a few. And even so, the struggle to know the truth of ages past has often eluded them, and even eluded those living in the past until it was too late for them to respond as they otherwise might have.
We still do not know, and never will, about the precise deliberations of Parliament for a few years under George II, years when the relationship between Great Britain and its New World colonies was just beginning to fray. We still think too harshly of the British for their treatment of Americans that led to the Revolutionary War. We do not, for instance, understand the context of such legislative measures as the Stamp Act, which Americans found a bellicose provocation but their brethren in England had long accepted.
We were so often presented with one-sided views of early American presidents, either heroes or villains, that until fairly recent times we could not acquaint ourselves with the full range of their humanity. And we have still not discovered the true sentiments of early-twentieth-century presidents on a number of topics, because they forbade reporters to quote them directly, and reporters were only too happy to acquiesce.
Most of us do not realize the role of the press, one newspaper in particular, in leading to the deaths of almost twenty-four hundred Americans in a war that never should have been fought.
By refusing to report on the viciousness of Stalin’s rule in the early thirties, a reporter sympathetic to Stalin’s goals encouraged those who read him to be sympathetic to his goals as well. As a result, countless Americans were deceived and the entire course of mid-twentieth-century history in our country was altered.
We did not know about the drinking habits of legislators that might have affected their votes on crucial issues, or even their attendance when votes were being taken. We did not know about the extracurricular sex lives of legislators that might have compromised their integrity and interfered with their commitment to the duties of office.
We cannot even be as certain as we would like about the identity of the kidnapper, or kidnappers, of Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s baby son.
But not all journalistic misstatements or cover-ups have had, or have threatened, dire consequences. Some, however inadvertently, have been the equivalent of practical jokes—the woman determined to fill the colonies with baby colonists, as reported by the most erudite of the founding fathers; the bizarre sight in the Nevada desert, as reported by the man some believe to be the founding father of American literature; the wild man of Baltimore, as reported by the wittiest and most perceptive social critic of the twentieth century; and the three plays reviewed by the great American novelist who didn’t see any of them. All of these men, at the time of their falsehoods, were working as journalists.
It is beyond the scope of this book, and beyond the ability of its author, to correct all of the first drafts of history that turned out to be mistaken. What follows are some examples of the sloppiest of those drafts, and analyses of the ways in which Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen were victimized, confused, and, on rare occasions, amused by them.
1
How Journalists Got the Idea
T HE FIRST LIE EVER TOLD, ALTHOUGH THE STORY cannot be confirmed and therefore might be a lie itself, was uttered for the ears of God. Canadian journalist Bruce Deachman writes that sometime around four thousand years ago, a voice roared through the Garden of Eden, causing tree branches to shake, trunks to quiver, and roots to vibrate. “Who ate my apple?” the voice asked. The question, Deachman reports, “was met by innocent looks all ’round and, eventuall