Before he takes
the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump should read Bill Sanderson’s
outstanding book, Bulletins from Dallas,
about how the country’s two leading wire services covered President John F.
Kennedy’s assassination. Silicon Valley
titans Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Larry Page (no relation to this
reviewer) and Sergey Brin could stand to read it, too.
After calling
CNN “fake news” last week, Trump could use a tutorial about how reporters go
about their jobs. It’s not always pleasant
– it might even take down our most sacred institutions or a favorite person –
but that’s how the business operates. At
its best, it covers events and people without fear or favor and always with
accuracy, balance and fairness. Silicon
Valley’s leaders could also use the book so they can discern which news is fake
and which is real.
In this day and age
of fake news websites and, recently, a network news anchor gone rogue, I’m sure
it’s difficult to believe that two news wire services, The Associated Press and
United Press International, once competed ferociously to not only get the news
first but to first get it right.
The physical
beating UPI White House Correspondent Merriman Smith took at the hands of his
competitor, an AP reporter, is UPI lore and is vividly recounted by Sanderson,
a New York Post editor, detailing how President Kennedy’s assassination was
reported by the two wire services shortly after shots were fired across
Dallas’s Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.
Sitting in the
front seat of what was called the wire service car, with easy access to its
radio phone, Smith quickly called UPI’s Dallas bureau once gunfire rang out,
dictating details as the car followed the presidential limousine to Parkland
Hospital, where Kennedy died.
Realizing Smith
was hogging the phone, the AP reporter, Jack Bell, punched Smith numerous times
to get it back. His pummeling didn’t
work and a story about the shots crossed UPI’s wire before the car carrying the
two reporters arrived at the hospital. There’s
even speculation Smith knocked the car’s phone out of order so UPI could
maintain its increasing minute by minute lead in reporting the assassination’s
details.
Nearly an hour
before the White House announced Kennedy’s death, UPI did something out of the
ordinary, quoting a Secret Service agent – the famous Clint Hill – that the
president was dead by the time he arrived at the hospital. UPI officially announced Kennedy’s death,
based on a statement by White House Deputy Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, at
1:35 p.m. CST, and the AP followed two minutes later.
In the arena of
wire service journalism, where every second and minute mattered, that was
similar to losing the Super Bowl 100 - 0.
In other words, the AP was resoundingly defeated.
UPI and AP
clients, at the time, included hundreds of newspapers around the world, along
with numerous television and radio stations.
They demanded accurate and fast reporting. If they took both wire services, they often compared
their reports for accuracy, speed, even writing style.
On that fateful
day, most Americans didn’t realize what Smith, Bell and their cohorts were
enduring to provide an accurate account of Kennedy’s death. Instead, they saw the news delivered by the
man considered the country’s most trusted news source, CBS News Anchor Walter
Cronkite, who spent his early years working for UPI’s predecessor, The United
Press.
Like his fellow
Unipresser, a term used to describe those who worked or were previously employed
at UP or UPI, Cronkite was ahead of his television news competitors. He was a man of great integrity and feared reporting
Kennedy’s death until it was confirmed, knowing an erroneous report of such
magnitude would ruin if not end his career.
That value is lost
today. NBC News Anchor Brian Williams was
caught fudging the truth about his time covering the early days of the Iraq War
in 2003. The New York Times had its own issues with Jayson Blair, a reporter
caught making up stories. More recently,
Rolling Stone magazine in 2014 reported
a rape at the University of Virginia that never happened.
And while the
news industry might want to be smug over Trump’s callouts of what’s fake news,
it would be better served to remember that some of this problem starts with us.
Sanderson’s book
traces Smith’s life from his youth in Georgia up through covering six presidents,
from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon.
He was a media star in his own right, writing stories for leading
magazines and even appearing on television’s “The Tonight Show.” Sanderson also shows that Smith was a Washington
insider, perhaps too friendly with the presidents he covered, especially Lyndon
Johnson.
The problem with
today’s technology is that anyone can be a “reporter”. But instead of having an editor review,
correct and ask questions about stories before they’re published or broadcast,
anyone can write a blog, publish a video, or post on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat
or Instagram and rarely be corrected or stopped, unless, perhaps, they say something
libelous or they’re publishing an act of terrorism. In other words, we’re in the era of fake
news, deliberately or not.
As Sanderson
opines, “The Internet made news faster (but) we ... gained four minutes (and)
lost a lot more.” (page 212)
The changed
habits of today’s news consumers – taking in more information online – hasn’t
helped the newspaper business. It resulted
in fewer advertising dollars and fewer reporters, Sanderson writes. In 2000, newspaper newsrooms employed 56,200
editors, reporters, photographers and support staff. It’s down to 32,900 as of 2016.
This decrease isn’t
just compromising the news business. It’s
also harming the country. It’s hard to
believe the nation’s depleted newsrooms didn’t contribute to some of the reporting
prior to the November 8th election predicting Hillary Clinton
winning the presidency. An election
involving 50 states cannot be covered from the newsroom. Reporters need to be on the ground, finding
out what the citizenry is thinking about those who would lead them.
Only now are the
editors at The Times and The Boston Globe discovering states like
Iowa and Wisconsin and sending reporters there.
From reading the stories, you might think they were covering foreign
countries.
The news
business and the United States were fortunate to have Merriman Smith and
certainly a UPI which covered politicians and events across the globe as the
world’s largest, independently owned news wire service.
The wire services
have suffered many setbacks since the early 1960s. UPI is much smaller, nothing like it was twenty
or thirty years ago, having been sold a few times. It’s owned by News World Communications, a
media entity founded by the Unification Church.
The AP suffers the same woes as the media industry it serves, seeing its
revenues decline nearly 25 percent from their peak in 2008.
Sanderson’s book
is very well sourced, and he told me both AP and UPI cooperated with him on the
book.
He also said AP’s archivists worry about how UPI is maintaining its
archives. Maybe there’s a deal to be
done there, with UPI allowing AP to manage and store their archives.
Smith’s life
ended in tragedy in 1970 with a self-inflicted pistol shot. He’s buried at Arlington National
Cemetery. It’s a fitting tribute to
him. The man who stood for everything journalism
holds near and dear – getting the story right – lays with America’s heroes,
including his son, Albert, killed in 1966 while serving in the Army in Vietnam.
(Publishing details: Bulletins from Dallas: Reporting the JFK Assassination, Bill Sanderson. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, November 1, 2016)
(Publishing details: Bulletins from Dallas: Reporting the JFK Assassination, Bill Sanderson. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, November 1, 2016)
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About me, the reviewer: I’m a freelance
reporter in Massachusetts and worked for UPI between 1984 and 1987, in
Washington, Dallas, and Philadelphia. I’m
also the co-author, with Philip L. Kilbride, of Plural Marriage for Our Times: A
Reinvented Option? 2nd Edition, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Publishers, 2012. My dad, Bob Page, was UPI’s general manager
between 1975 and 1980. He spent 20 years
at UPI, from 1960 to 1980.
Link to my book:
AP staff
cuts:
AP 2015 annual
revenues:
BusinessInsider.com
on a fake “mommy” blog:
Cisco on fake
blogs:
Pew report on
the U.S. newspaper industry:
Arlington
National Cemetery obituary of Merriman Smith’s son:
The New York
Times story about Rolling Stone magazine’s fake rape story at the University of
Virginia:
The New York
Times story about Jayson Blair:
The New York
Times story about early voting leading to a Hillary Clinton presidential
victory:
