Journalism professor unveils truths behind media-driven myths

W. Joseph Campbell (above) spoke on the subject of media myths in the GUC Performance Center Nov. 10.

Jason Lankford Staff Writer

“They are the junk food of journalism,” said W. Joseph Campbell, a journalism professor who visited UNA last week. “They are tasty, alluring and delicious perhaps, but not terribly nutritious or healthy.”

Campbell is referring to media-driven myths, news stories that have been greatly distorted or exaggerated, yet have become widely-accepted historical accounts of major events in American history.

Campbell teaches at American University and is the author of “Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism.” He began to investigate media myths after realizing that many of the famous news stories he discussed in class sounded “too neat and tidy to be true.”

In his presentation, Campbell focused on three of the myths from his book: the role of The Washington Post in the Watergate scandal, Walter Cronkite’s impact on the Vietnam War and the supposed hysteria created by Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds.”

Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are often credited with exposing Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal, but Campbell believes that explanation is overly simplistic.

“The heroic journalist interpretation minimizes the contributions and forces that really unraveled the scandal,” he said. “Woodward and Bernstein, as good as their reporting was, were marginal and not decisive in the outcome of Watergate.”

Campbell advises people to be wary of the “great man theory,” the idea that individuals acting alone can have a major impact on complex conflicts like the Watergate scandal. He said the Nixon presidency was ended due to a collaborative effort between a number of government agencies. The journalists played no part in uncovering Nixon’s personal recordings, which were the main items used as evidence against him.

The second myth Campbell discussed involved Cronkite’s statement, at the end of his coverage of the Tet offensive in Vietnam, that the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate.” President Lyndon Johnson is supposed to have remarked, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America,” after viewing the program at the White House.

There are multiple variations of Johnson’s quote, which, according to Campbell, indicate that the accounts are inaccurate.

“If you can’t get the story straight and you have this acute version variability, you have a marker of a media-driven myth,” he said. “That’s a real signal that there’s something fishy about this story.”

As it turns out, Johnson was not in the White House or in front of a TV when the report aired. He was at the birthday party of a colleague. Campbell points out that Cronkite’s remarks were not uncommon in the media, as several other major news outlets had been critical of U.S. military actions in Vietnam.

Cronkite’s criticism didn’t impact Johnson’s policies, because, even after the broadcast, he urged Americans to recommit to winning the war. Campbell said this demonstrates how media-driven myths exaggerate the power of the media to shape policy.

“They inflate the notion of news media power,” he said. “They are opportunities for the news media to congratulate themselves and place themselves at the center of important and decisive moments in American life.”

Campbell debunked the myth that the 1938 radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” caused mass hysteria by citing surveys that suggest that, of the 6 million people who tuned in to the broadcast, only 1.2 million admitted to being frightened and disturbed. But, Campbell said, “Frightened and disturbed is a long way from panicked and hysterical.”

Calls to police stations, fire departments and newspapers surged as people tried to find out if what was happening was real. This, according to Campbell, was a sign that “people were responding in a rational way, getting confirmation or denial from sources they recognized as reliable.”

Campbell believes that newspapers played a critical role in the propagation of the myth, leaping at the opportunity to discredit the relatively new and threatening medium of radio as an unreliable and irresponsible news source.

He discussed why media-driven myths persist and what media consumers can do to be aware of potential myths that may emerge in the future. Media myths make good stories, characterized by heroism and nostalgic appeal. They often place the media in the role of protector and watchdog and involve major scandals or disasters that end with positive, overly-simplified resolutions.

“They offer simplistic explanations of complicated historical events,” said Campbell. “It’s far easier to reduce an event like Watergate to the work of journalists than it is to try to keep in mind the intricacies of the scandal.”

Campbell closed his presentation by urging audience members to think critically about news stories that seem too good to be true and to hold the media accountable, forcing them to fulfill their objective of “getting it right.”