All the News Unfit to Print Read online

  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

  USUALLY 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 th
e 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

  THE 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, eventually, a timid chorus of ‘Not me.’”

  Then, only a few days later, came the second lie. Deachman tells us that Eve slipped a fig leaf over her midsection, sashayed up to Adam, and asked him whether it made her look fat. “No, dear,” Adam replied, “not at all.” Eve looked at him dubiously.

  Whenever it really happened, it was understandable, even inevitable, that human beings would discover the lie to be an invaluable tactic for interpersonal relationships, a natural reaction when we found ourselves in unfavorable circumstances. Adam and Eve were afraid of God’s punishment; why not deny the crime? Adam was afraid of hurting Eve’s feelings by telling her she needed a plus-size fig leaf; why not deny the perception? In both cases, self-interest seemed better served by fiction than by fact.

  In Aldous Huxley’s 1923 novel Antic Hay, a young man named Theodore breaks a lunch date with a young woman named Emily. The two have recently made love for the first time, but on this day he prefers not to take the train back to London where she awaits him for a repeat performance. Instead, he wants to meet with another woman, one whose fleshly pleasures he has enjoyed in the past and longs to savor again, the notorious Vivian Viveash. To do so, Theodore must deceive Emily. He sends her a telegram: “Slight accident on way to station not serious at all but a little indisposed come same train tomorrow.”

  It is not the only lie that Theodore tells Emily, but it is the one that sets off social historian Evelin Sullivan in a volume of her own called The Concise Book of Lying. She understands that the reasons for all of Theodore’s lies are obvious to readers of Huxley’s novel, but she imagines a person opening Antic Hay precisely at the point of the falsehood described above and, having no idea of its context, trying to discern its motive. Such a person, Sullivan believes, would find the possibilities limitless, and she illustrates the point with examples that are sometimes intriguing, sometimes ludicrous. Theodore could have lied to Emily, Sullivan tells:• To get out of a tedious social obligation.

  • To blacken the reputation of a business rival.

  • To get out of helping a friend move.

  • To keep from hurting his parents’ feelings.

  • To avoid an embarrassing admission of ignorance or lack of money.

  • To keep from his wife the truth about a child he fathered before he was married.

  • To have an excuse for missing a meeting considered important by his boss.

  • To get a woman to sleep with him by claiming to be a marine biologist.

  • To keep secret a crime he committed ten years earlier and deeply regrets.

  • To protect himself from harm by the thugs of a police state.

  • To remain a closet homosexual.

  • To keep from his wife the truth about his having an affair.

  • To keep his landlord from knowing he has a cat.

  • To get a job at a law firm by claiming he graduated from an Ivy League school.

  • To conceal from Emily preparations for her surprise birthday party.

  • To cover for a teammate who missed practice and has promised to reform.

  • To keep his I-told-you-so father from learning that he has been fired.

  • To get even with someone who he knows has done him harm.

  • To hide his drinking.

  • To get a job by claiming he is a veteran.

  • To sell as genuine a fabricated account of his childhood, alleging abuse and neglect.

  • To save his young sister from the gallows by confessing to a crime he didn’t commit.

  • To get someone to have unprotected sex with him although he knows he has AIDS [which, given the fact that Antic Hay was written in 1923, would make Theodore prescient as well as devious].

  • To bring people around to his point of view on something by inventing supporting anecdotes.

  • To keep one of his children from learning a distressing truth.

  • To sell his romance fiction by using a female pseudonym.

  • To pay less income tax.

  Sullivan’s list is worth considering not because of what it might tell us about Theodore’s relationship with Emily, but because it illustrates the vast variety of motives that human beings possess for avoiding the truth. She is, however, just beginning. Several pages later, Sullivan gives even more examples, quoting categories of lies from a long since out-of-print book by Amelia Opie called Illustrations of Lying, in All Its Branches. Opie refers to:

  Lies of Vanity.

  Lies of Flattery.

  Lies of Convenience

  Lies of Interest.

  Lies of Fear.

  Lies of first-rate Malignity.

  Lies of second-rate Malignity.

  Lies, falsely called Lies of Benevolence.

  Lies of real Benevolence.

  Lies of mere Wantonness, proceeding from a depraved love of

  lying, or contempt for the truth.

  There are others probably; but I believe that this list contains those that are of the most importance; unless, indeed, we may add to it practical lies; that is, lies acted, not spoken.

  Sullivan is still not through. Opie was not detailed enough for her. There are other reasons for truth-bending, Sullivan states:The fear of losing something—money, a job, a marriage, power, respect, reputation, love, life, freedom, comfort, enjoyment, cooperation, etc., etc.—a better job, admission to a desired school, the chance to hang out with kids our parents tell us to avoid, sexual favors, money, revenge, love, cooperation, respect and admiration, control and power, comfort and convenience, and so forth—is another. Of course, depending on the liar’s mental state, the
desire for something may appear as the fear of not getting it; the intense desire to marry the adored creature can become the desperate fear of being thwarted, just as the wish for convenience can be the fear of inconvenience—millions have lied to avoid an argument.

  The preceding appears on page 57 of The Concise Book of Lying. The volume’s last numbered page is 334. By that time, “conciseness” has become yet another of the book’s countless misstatements.

  The first newsmen to lie were probably the first newsmen—the minstrels who sang the news, accompanying themselves with a homemade stringed instrument of some sort, in the villages of medieval Europe. They got their information from the nearby courts, speaking to people who had themselves spoken to the king or duke or baron or lord. Then, as they returned to their villages, they composed their “newscasts” in their heads, almost like stand-up comedians arranging their material to get the biggest laughs.

  But surely, one suspects, the minstrels were not concerned with veracity so much as performance. Surely they molded the truth of events to suit the demands of rhyme and the flow of melody. And the more quickly they got back to their villages, the more likely they would be able to stake out positions at heavily trafficked intersections.

  And just as surely, the men and women who made up their audience, living lives of isolation as they did, not yet believing that events outside their ken could have any significant effect on their own lives, were only marginally interested in veracity. To them it was the music that mattered, not the lyrics. The news was a show, as it would become once again in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, although this time with much more sophisticated orchestrations.