Getting It Wrong Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism [Hardcover]

Many of American journalism’s best-known and most cherished stories are exaggerated, dubious, or apocryphal. They are media-driven myths, and they attribute to the news media and their practitioners far more power and influence than they truly exert. InGetting It Wrong, writer and scholar W. Joseph Campbell confronts and dismantles prominent media-driven myths, describing how they can feed stereotypes, distort understanding about the news media, and deflect blame from policymakers. Campbell debunks the notions that theWashington Post’s Watergate reporting brought down Richard M. Nixon’s corrupt presidency, that Walter Cronkite’s characterization of the Vietnam War in 1968 shifted public opinion against the conflict, and that William Randolph Hearst vowed to “furnish the war” against Spain in 1898. This expanded second edition includes a new preface and new chapters about the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, the hauntingNapalm Girlphotograph of the Vietnam War, and bogus quotations driven by the Internet and social media.

W. Joseph Campbell, a former newspaper and wire service journalist, is Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of five other books, including1995: The Year the Future BeganandYellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies.

List of Illustrations
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. “I’ll Furnish the War”: The Making of a Media Myth
2. Fright beyond Measure? The Myth of The War of the Worlds
3. Murrow vs. McCarthy: Timing Makes the Myth
4. TV Viewers, Radio Listeners, and the Myth of the First Kennedy-Nixon Debate
5. The Bay of Pigs–New York Times Suppression Myth
6. Debunking the “Cronkite Moment”
7. The Nuanced Myth: Bra Burning at Atlantic City
8. PilÓ