DDT propaganda machine

January 23, 2010

Media Check carries edited excerpts from a book by Daniel Gutstein from last year, Not A Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy (Key Porter, 2009) by Donald Gutstein, Key Porter (2009).

In the excerpted chapter Gutstein details how nefarious interest groups conspired to ruin the reputation of Rachel Carson and environmental protection activists with false claims about DDT and environmentalist aims.

The problem with the coverage of the DDT issue and with the eco-imperialism charge is that they are based on falsehoods that the media did not investigate. Former CBC-TV National News anchor Knowlton Nash once said that “…our job in the media… is to… provide a searchlight probing for truth through the confusing, complicated, cascading avalanche of fact and fiction.” In this case, the media let their audiences down; fiction prevailed over fact.

Despite what the pro-DDT organizations alleged, DDT was not banned for use in mosquito control and could continue to be used in 25 countries in malarial regions. In these countries, limited amounts of DDT can be sprayed on the inside walls of houses to combat malaria-carrying mosquitoes. “The environmental community is collaborating with the World Health Organization to ensure that the phase-out of the remaining uses of DDT does not undermine the battle against malaria and the well-being of people living in malarial zones,” the United Nations Environmental Programme reported when the treaty came into force.

Has anyone read the book?  Has anyone seen it?  (So what if it’s aimed at Canada?)

More thoughts:  Years ago, when Jan Brunvand first achieved some fame cataloging urban myths, it occurred to me that his books should be required reading in the very first survey classes in journalism school.   Maybe they should be required reading in political science, rhetoric, and philosophy, too.

Gutstein’s book would be a good reader for a class on reporting, or investigative reporting, or science reporting, or political reporting.  I’m not sure where it would fit in to a science curriculum, but I wish more scientists came out of undergraduate years aware that they can get hammered by these hoax-selling, axe-grinding disinformation machines.  All those reports about how Rachel Carson is the “murderer of millions?”  They coarsen dialog, they misinform, disinform and malinform the public.  They do great disservice to citizenship and voters, and ultimately, to our democratic institutions.

It’s not enough to have a counter, good-information plan.  These people must be convinced to stop.

More:

4 Comments | Business, Canada, DDT, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, History, Hoaxes, Journalism, News, Political Smear, Rachel Carson, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas Tribune and Texas State Board of Education

January 5, 2010

Have you found Texas Tribune yet?  It’s a new, on-line newspaper, and generally it’s terrific.

See their collection of stories already about the State Board of Education. The collection can substitute for at least one cup of coffee to get your blood flowing in the morning.

Leave a Comment » | Education, Journalism, News, Newspapers, On-line education, On-line learning, Scandals, State school boards, Texas, Texas Education Agency (TEA) | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

December 30 – Happy Hubble Day 2009!

December 30, 2009

Ultraviolet image of the Andromeda Galaxy, first known to be a galaxy by Edwin Hubble on December 30, 1924 - Galaxy Evolution Explorer image courtesy NASA

Ultraviolet image of the Andromeda Galaxy, first known to be a galaxy by Edwin Hubble on December 30, 1924 - Galaxy Evolution Explorer image courtesy NASA

Today is a good day to celebrate the universe in all it’s glory – December 30. This year, the International Year of Astronomy, makes it a double celebration.

On December 30, 1924, Edwin Hubble announced he’d discovered other galaxies in distant space.  Though it may not have been so clear at the time, it meant that, as a galaxy, we are not alone in the universe (whether we are alone as intelligent life is a separate question).  It also meant that the universe is much, much bigger than most people had dared to imagine.

Logo for International Year of Astronomy 2009 - Astronomy2009.org

Go to Astronomy2009.org

Below, mostly an encore post.

Last year for Hubble Day, Wired picked up on the story (with a gracious link to 2007’s post here at the Bathtub). Wired includes several links to even more information, a good source of information.  See Wired’s 2009 post here.

Hubble was the guy who showed us the universe is not only bigger than we imagined, it’s probably much bigger and much more fantastic than we can imagine. Hubble is the guy who opened our imaginations to the vastness of all creation.

How does one celebrate Hubble Day? Here are some suggestions:

  • Easier than Christmas cards: Send a thank-you note to your junior high school science teacher, or whoever it was who inspired your interest in science. Mrs. Hedburg, Mrs. Andrews, Elizabeth K. Driggs, Herbert Gilbert, Mr. Willis, and Stephen McNeal, thank you.
  • Rearrange your Christmas/Hanukkah/Eid/KWANZAA lights in the shape of the Andromeda Galaxy — or in the shape of any of the great photos from the Hubble Telescope (Andromeda Galaxy pictured above; Hubble images here)

    A few of the images from the Hubble Telescope

    A few of the images from the Hubble Telescope

  • Go visit your local science museum; take your kids along – borrow somebody else’s kids if you have to (take them along, too)
  • Spend two hours in your local library, just looking through the books on astronomy and the universe
  • Anybody got a good recipe for a cocktail called “The Hubble?” “The Andromeda?” Put it in the comments, please

The encore post, from 2007:

December 30, 1924, Edwin Hubble announced the results of his observations of distant objects in space.

PBS

Edwin Hubble - source: PBS

In 1924, he announced the discovery of a Cepheid, or variable star, in the Andromeda Nebulae. Since the work of Henrietta Leavitt had made it possible to calculate the distance to Cepheids, he calculated that this Cepheid was much further away than anyone had thought and that therefore the nebulae was not a gaseous cloud inside our galaxy, like so many nebulae, but in fact, a galaxy of stars just like the Milky Way. Only much further away. Until now, people believed that the only thing existing outside the Milky Way were the Magellanic Clouds. The Universe was much bigger than had been previously presumed.

Later Hubble noted that the universe demonstrates a “red-shift phenomenon.” The universe is expanding. This led to the idea of an initial expansion event, and the theory eventually known as Big Bang.

Hubble’s life offered several surprises, and firsts:

Hubble was a tall, elegant, athletic, man who at age 30 had an undergraduate degree in astronomy and mathematics, a legal degree as a Rhodes scholar, followed by a PhD in astronomy. He was an attorney in Kentucky (joined its bar in 1913), and had served in WWI, rising to the rank of major. He was bored with law and decided to go back to his studies in astronomy.

In 1919 he began to work at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, where he would work for the rest of his life. . . .
Hubble wanted to classify the galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and brightness patterns, and in his observations he made another momentous discovery: By observing redshifts in the light wavelengths emitted by the galaxies, he saw that galaxies were moving away from each other at a rate constant to the distance between them (Hubble’s Law). The further away they were, the faster they receded. This led to the calculation of the point where the expansion began, and confirmation of the big bang theory. Hubble calculated it to be about 2 billion years ago, but more recent estimates have revised that to 20 billion years ago.

An active anti-fascist, Hubble wanted to joined the armed forces again during World War II, but was convinced he could contribute more as a scientist on the homefront. When the 200-inch telescope was completed on Mt. Palomar, Hubble was given the honor of first use. He died in 1953.

“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”

That news on December 30, 1924, didn’t make the first page of the New York Times. The Times carried a small note on February 25, 1925, that Hubble won a $1,000 prize from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.

(Does anyone have a suitable citation for that video? Where did it come from? Who produced it? Is there more somewhere?)

Happy Hubble Day! Look up!

Resources:

Alert others to look up and toast Hubble:

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2 Comments | A Good Story, Astronomy, Big Bang, Biography, Current History, Historic documents, History, History images, History of Science, How do we know what we know, Images, International Year of Astronomy 2009, knowledge, milestones, Natural history, News, Physics, Research, Science, Space exploration, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

What’s a journalist’s duty? Limbaugh ignores warning signs, punks himself

October 25, 2009

Millard Fillmore’s bathtub came out of a hoax story written in 1917 by one of America’s greatest cynics and writers, H. L. Mencken. Mencken lived to regret that he ever wrote the piece, after it was cited as fact by encyclopedias and critics of Fillmore’s presidency.

Mencken’s story holds a moral, a lesson for all critics of the American scene, and especially anyone who comments on political figures:  Verify everything.

Ernest Hemingway put it best, if crudely:   “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”*

If a writer or reporter doesn’t have one of those devices built-in, he is likely to find himself up to his chin in it after having failed to detect it in time to avoid the plunge.

Rush Limbaugh is in it up to his chin right now, after following Michael Ledeen off the dock.

Faithful readers here — all dozen of ’em — may remember last January when we spotlighted a hoax at a blog called Jumping in Pools; the author claimed President Obama had ordered members our armed forces to take an oath of allegiance to Obama in place of their regular oath to the nation.

Orson Welles was on to something with his “War of the Worlds” broadcast.  In fact, after that first night of panic, the same script was used on other occasions, and people still got suckered in.  (Listen to the RadioLab feature on this phenomenon — it’s wonderful.)

It’s almost as if people were going around with signs on their backs that say “Lie to me, baby!”  Only, the people put the signs on their shirts and blouses themselves.

For whatever ill-thought, malicious reason, somebody invented an absolutely unbelievable hoax that President Obama asked the Pentagon to have military people swear allegiance to him, instead of the nation. Jumping in Pools posted it.

Jumping in Pools also listed it as satire, in tags.

But the hoax sucked in the gullible all over the web.

Limbaugh?  Ledeen?  Y’all would do well to read this blog, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.  You might have recognized the name of the blog, Jumping in Pools, that carried that phantasmagorical story about Barack Obama’s student essay, finally being released in part to Time Magazine’s Joe Klein.

Yahoo!’s Buzz Up explained the story, with links you ought to check out:

It must have seemed so perfect. An obscure blogger unearths some pages of President Obama’s college thesis. The report supposedly comes from big-time journalist Joe Klein of Time magazine. And the thesis has some real gems: like Obama’s disdain for the Constitution.

The whole thing was nothing more than a satirical post on a humor blog. But Rush Limbaugh, who quoted from the supposed thesis on his radio show, sure wasn’t laughing. Here’s how it went down.

An unknown blogger picked up on a made-up post meant as a joke, which claimed that Joe Klein had gotten his hands on 10 pages of student Obama’s college thesis. Rush Limbaugh jumped on it, which immediately sparked Web searches on “obama thesis.”

Supposedly titled “Aristocracy Revisited,” the excerpt revealed the president had “doubts” about the “so-called founders.” Juicy. Except not true. Limbaugh discovered halfway through his show that he’d been had, but defended himself by saying basically the thesis felt true. Listen in to Rush’s mea sorta culpa.

Joe Klein finally jumped in, and called the report “nonsense” on his Swampland blog, and the blogger who thought the hoax was real also apologized.

Michael Ledeen writing at Pajamas Media was that “blogger who thought the hoax was real.”

Ledeen had the good grace to apologize (and in doing so reveal that he really should have been much more en garde):

The hoax/satire was written in August, so it’s not connected to any current event.  I cam across it on Twitter, read the blog, found it interesting, and posted on it.  I failed to notice that one of the tags was “satire.”

So he got me, and lots of others. It worked because it’s plausible.  I’ve done satirical pieces myself, and I know how they can take off.  I once wrote one that said that Bill Casey did not die, and was hiding in a bunker under the St Andrews golf course from which he was running Mikhail Gorbachev.  I thought it was obviously satirical, but it went like wildfire all over the world.  And that was in the days before the Internet.

So I should have picked up some hint, but I didn’t.  Shame on me.

But Limbaugh?  He railed on for more than half an hour on the evils of Obama revealed in the completely fictional essay; and then when he was alerted to the fact that it was a hoax, he didn’t apologize.  He said he was suckered in because the hoax was plausible, and Obama might have done such a thing.

“I know Obama thinks it,” Limbaugh said, purporting to channel the guy he despises only too openly.

I’m trying to suppress it, but Limbaugh’s actions remind me mightily of an old Cheech and Chong routine.  One wonders what Obama’s more rabid critics would not grant credence to.

Wall of Shame

What would Hemingway have reported?

Other thoughts:

  • Jonathan Last’s article for the Templeton Foundation’s In Character Journal wonders about how we choose what to believe, and whom.  The Dallas Morning News carried the article in the “Points” section this morning, but it’s not up on their website; look at the article at the Templeton Foundation site.

________
* I’m convinced he said it. I’m relying here on Elizabeth Dewberry’s contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway, “Hemingway’s Journalism and the Realist Dilemma,” on page 25.  She cites to an interview, but I’ve misplaced the rest of that note for the moment, and for some odd reason the page with the citation isn’t included on Google Books (the pain of internet research, to get to the information you need out of the haystack, and find that particular needle has been intentionally removed).  Read Dewberry, though, for a much longer and informative discussion about hoaxes and fakery in journalism, which is the problem discussed in this post.

Don’t let your friends be bamboozled, pass the word:

 

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8 Comments | Accuracy, Barack Obama, Ethics, History, Hoaxes, Journalism, News, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Alas, that’s the way it is: Walter Cronkite dead at 92

July 18, 2009

You can’t explain the influence of Walter Cronkite to a high school kid today.  They don’t have any experience that begins to corroborate what you’d say.

Walter Cronkite in the last decade - Texas Parks and Wildlife photo by Richard Roberts

Walter Cronkite in the last decade - Texas Parks and Wildlife photo by Richard Roberts

Along with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, Mr. Cronkite was among the first celebrity anchormen. In 1995, 14 years after he retired from the “CBS Evening News,” a TV Guide poll ranked him No. 1 in seven of eight categories for measuring television journalists. (He professed incomprehension that Maria Shriver beat him out in the eighth category, attractiveness.) He was so widely known that in Sweden anchormen were once called Cronkiters. (from the New York Times)

I’m saddened at the death of Cronkite.  One of the things that saddens me is that he probably could have anchored for at least a decade past when he last signed off.  Nothing against Dan Rather, at least not from me — just that Cronkite was one of a kind.  He won’t be missed by too many people alive today who never had a chance to see him work.

So, go see him work. Media Decoder has a series of YouTube pieces showing what Cronkite could do, what Cronkite did.  It’s history go see.

Other posts on Cronkite at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

More, probably better stuff

5 Comments | Accuracy, Biography, Heroes, History, Journalism, News, Radio, Space Race, Television, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Swine flu shuts down prisons: Let the prisoners out?

May 3, 2009

This headline from the Sacramento Bee sure caught my eye:

Swine flu case shuts down visits at all 33 state prisons

Of course, I read it too fast, and skipped over the word “visits.”  I had to click on the story to see whether they were going to tell the prisoners to stay at home for a week, like the Fort Worth, Texas, school district did.   I suppose, after a fashion, that was exactly the message.

At the Officer of the Receiver for California Prison Health Care Services, spokesman Luis Patino said Sunday that an inmate in Centinela State Prison in Imperial County was diagnosed as probable for the H1N1 virus, or swine flu.

“The inmate and his cellmate have been isolated, Patino said. “They remain at the prison.”

Whew!

Ticket sales for movies are way up in those areas where the schools are shut down — good news for the opening weekend of X-Men Origins:  Wolverine.

Maybe we’d be better off if the kids remained in school, as well as keeping the convicts in the prisons.

Is the panic over swine flu too much? If we go back to the week ending March 21, 2009, we find that there were already more than 22,000 cases of influenza in the U.S., with 35 pediatric deaths.  Has the swine flu added to either the rates of infection or the rates of death?  If the dramatic steps, the event cancellations and school closings, are appropriate for the swine flu, shouldn’t they have been appropriate for the other flu viruses, too?

Do we really need to close schools?  What do you think — tell us in comments.

See the CDC’s report on swine flu at their site:    H1N1 (Swine Flu)

Other resources:

Leave a Comment » | Disease, Health care, History, Influenza, Journalism, medicine, News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Newsbusters shows bias toward stupid

December 14, 2008

What’s the big deal here?  Newsbusters, appearing completely unfamiliar with the discussion format of real news organizations, reveals its Freudian slip:  Newsbusters has a bias, and that bias is toward stupid, and venal.

Jim Lehrer in no way defended the actions of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.  If Newsbusters can’t tell what’s going on in a basic television interview, they have no business claiming to be associated with news in any fashion.

Newsbusters owes Lehrer a retraction.

Resources:

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, News, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Television | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Happy birthday, Walter Cronkite (a bit late)

November 12, 2008

Missed this one.  But contrary to what most of my journalism profs said, I think news is news so long as people don’t know it.

Walter Cronkite - undated photo via Mediabistro

Walter Cronkite - undated photo via Mediabistro

Walter Cronkite turned 92 on election day, November 4.

Astounding.  He’s still active in news, though heaven knows CBS doesn’t use him as they should (where was he on election night?).

I’ve been interested to see the prominence he gets, now, in history accounts of the Vietnam war.  At the same time, it’s painful that we have students whose parents didn’t grow up with Cronkite on the air.  They’re a generation removed from knowing what they missed.

My one brief Cronkite story:  Late one afternoon I was preparing for a hearing at the Senate Labor Committee for the next morning, preparations that had been slowed by a fair deal of breaking news around Reagan’s Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan, whose potential links to crime organizations had been hidden from the committee during his nomination hearings (Donovan was acquitted of wrongdoing in a later trial).  Chaos might be the best way to describe the events, especially in the news area.   A lot of misinformation was passed around, about what were the position and concerns of Labor Committee Chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch (my boss), what was the position of the White House, what was the evidence and what wasn’t the evidence on Donovan, etc.

I turned on the television to catch Cronkite’s broadcast.  About five minutes in, the phone rang.  It was Rita Braver, then a CBS producer, and she really gave me the third degree about some minor point on the Donovan story — a minor point, but one that had been reported incorrectly by others (I forget now what the issue was).  I had known Braver, chiefly on the phone, for some time.  I found her extremely careful with the facts, which was comfortable considering where she sat in CBS’s ranks; the stuff she worked on was on the evening news regularly.  We talked for a few minutes, and then rather abruptly she yelled “Hang on!”  and put me on hold.  The newscast I was watching went to a commercial break, and as sometimes happened, the camera pulled away, and Cronkite on the air reached for the telephone on his desk.  The commercial came on simultaneously with the voice on the phone:  “This is Walter Cronkite.  Mr. Darrell, I have a question about this report I’m holding.  I think Rita has spoken with you about it.”  We talked about the issue for just about a minute, he thanked me.  As the show came out of the break, Cronkite read the news about Ray Donovan that day, with Hatch’s views.  He got it right, of course.

Do most people realize how intensely most news operations work to get even the small stuff right?

It was really odd watching Cronkite reach for the phone, and then hear him on my phone.

Other Cronkite news:

4 Comments | Accuracy, Biography, Boy Scouts of America, History, Journalism, News, Television, Texas history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Isn’t that how the last depression started?”

September 25, 2008

Econ, government teachers:  Are you ready to explain this one?

“China banks told to halt lending to U.S. banks“

And then this one:

“China denies shunning foreign banks“

“Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

1 Comment | Business, China, Economics, Financial literacy, News, Newspapers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Them lyin’ newspapers: World Net Daily gets Bible class story exactly wrong

September 4, 2008

Sometimes you have to wonder if people are really that stupid, or if they are acting stupid for nefarious purposes.

The inveterate trash purveyor, World Net Daily, carried a column with this headline:  “Texas to teachers:  Bible will be taught.“

It’s what you’d expect out of Texas, sort of, an order from the state to those darned secularists and atheists in the teaching biz, forcing them to teach the Bible to yearning-for-scripture chilluns.

But the story gets it almost exactly backwards:  Texas’s Attorney General ruled that schools do NOT need to offer special electives in the Bible under a new state law.

And to the consternation of Bible thumpers everywhere, it appears that instead of Bible study, tough academic courses that may include serious literary and history criticism of scripture will fill the bill.

The post here at the Bathtub was headlined, “Texas AG rules:  Bible classes not required.”  In the Houston Chronicle, religionists got what might be their most favorable headline, “‘Bible bill’ for Texas schools up for interpretation,” though the body of the story made things pretty clear, I thought.  The Fort Worth Star-Telegram was clear:  “Texas Schools don’t have to offer Bible class, attorney general says.”

The staid, conservative Dallas Morning News said “Bible study class optional for Texas schools, attorney general says.”  The Austin American-Statesman:  “Bible course not mandated, but instruction is.”

The opinion, over the signature of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot, includes this clue to reporters: ” . . . the Legislature did not mandate that this curriculum instruction be provided in independent courses.”

So, how did World Net Daily get a story almost completely perpendicular to the facts?  Perhaps they hope that some hapless Texas school district superintendent or board member will read their story, and not the AG’s decision, and order a Bible class.  Especially if that class is the academically-discount version suggested by WND, from National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools in Greensboro, North Carolina, there is likely to be litigation — the school district will get sued and lose its shirt.

Who wins then?  WND gets to report on the story and editorialize.

It’s interesting that at least two people who know better got suckered in, Ed Brayton and P. Z. Myers.  If they can be fooled by WND, what school superintendent in Texas can be safe? Heaven knows what schools in other states might do.

You may want to check out:

1 Comment | Bill of Rights, Education, Education quality, First Amendment, Law, News, Politics, Religion, Texas, Texas Education Agency (TEA), Texas Lege, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT conference: Safe or not? Who will report?

March 12, 2008

March 14 beckons from the near horizon. A group of scientists and policy wonks will gather at Alma College, in Alma, Michigan, to look at the issues of DDT and health. This is the first major conference of its kind since the POPs Treaty, at least.

Logo for Kenaga DDT Conference, Alma College, 2008

Controversy again swirls around DDT, with a large industry campaign again after the reputation of Rachel Carson just the same as in 1963 — though Ms. Carson has been dead since 1964. The disinformation campaign also impugns environmentalists, health care workers (especially if they’ve ever worked for the World Health Organization), Al Gore (there is no rationale), and when the minions think they can get away with it, it impugns bed nets and stagnant pool draining.

This public relations campaign against Rachel Carson enjoys a great deal of success. Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn, who seems never to have met an insult to a scientist he couldn’t use, successfully stopped the U.S. Senate from passing a bill naming a post office in honor of Rachel Carson, one of Coburn’s greatest legislative achievements. Several people in Congress, including Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop, were similarly hornswoggled.

This conference could put real, accurate information in front of the public.

Are my expectations way too high? I hope reporting from this conference might inject sanity, comity, humility and courtesy back into the discussions of how to treat malaria, and whether DDT should ever be used.

Associated Press? Reuters? New York Times? Chicago Tribune? Detroit News, or Detroit Free Press? Lansing State Journal?

Who will report from the conference?

I hope major news outlets will have reporters there.

Resources:

5 Comments | DDT, Environmental justice, Junk science, Justice, Malaria, News, Newspapers, Public education, Public health, Rachel Carson, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Old iron pants” Cronkite

February 10, 2008

I noted a documentary on Texas water problems, narrated by Walter Cronkite. Okay, no kid in college today remembers Cronkite on the news every night; it’s likely that most of our high school students could not identify him in any way.

Walter Cronkite with NASA manned-flight capsules

Walter Cronkite anchoring coverage of a NASA manned space flight, for CBS News (Gemini Mission series?); CBS News Photo via NASA

Cronkite was the most respected man in news through the 1960s and 1970s. Recruited to CBS during World War II, Cronkite is famous for his sign-off — “And that’s the way it is . . .” — well remembered for his announcement of the death of President Kennedy, remembered among newsmen and space aficianadoes for his coverage of NASA’s glory days, and remembered for his post-Tet Offensive judgment announced in an on-air editorial that the American public had not been getting the facts about the Vietnam conflict, and that the U.S. could not “win” such a war. Because Cronkite’s credibility was so great, his turn on the view of the winability of Vietnam carried a lot of public opinion with him. When Cronkite’s views on the war turned against it, America turned against it.

So, it would be nice if students had a passing familiarity with the Cronkite story.

When I found Cronkite narrating a Texas Parks and Wildlife documentary, at 91, it pleased me.

But, looking for a short bio to link to for the post, I found this 1996 interview with Cronkite, introduced by a biographical sketch, including this piece of information:

Most recently, Cronkite, affectionately nicknamed “Old Iron Pants” for his unflappability under pressure, has recorded the many significant events of his distinguished career in his autobiography, A Reporter’s Life (Knopf, 1996).

What? How does “Iron Pants” relate to unflappability?

It doesn’t. Someone has cleaned up the story for public consumption. But the original story isn’t all that profane or racy, either.

During the political conventions of the late 1950s and 1960s, the three commercial networks, later joined by PBS, would camp out at the convention halls. Someone would anchor the broadcast for the network — Huntley and Brinkley for NBC, the current news anchor for ABC, and Cronkite for CBS — and the coverage frequently would take a couple of hours in the afternoon, and then go through the entire prime time hours (hey — it was late summer during rerun season; who cared?).

The anchor booths often were suspended capsules up in the rafters of the convention center; bathrooms were a long way from the anchor booths. Huntley or Brinkley, as a team, could take a break and take a stroll to relieve himself while his partner carried on. ABC sometimes brought in one of the roving reporters from the floor, or a guest anchor, to give their anchor some time out of the booth.

Cronkite soldiered on alone. He was called “Old Iron Pants” because he seemed to have no need to take a break to relieve himself.

This story was old by the time I covered the Democratic National Convention in New York City in 1976. One network reporter swore that, during the 1972 conventions, a group of reporters counted the coffees and waters going into Cronkite to see if he was doing some sort of fluidless sprint — he matched the other anchors drop for drop of consumption. So, in 1976, the rumor was that Cronkite had to have a private bathroom built into the anchor booth somewhere.

No one could find it.

One reporter for a New York station swore he’d met Cronkite in a restroom, but no one believed him. No one else in the room at the time could say they had also met Cronkite — no corroboration, no credibility.

And so the legend of “Old Iron Pants” grew, bolstered by stories from old reporters unfettered by Snopes.com. Cronkite’s on-air brilliance, and ability to cover hours of conventions at a stride, were made possible by a bladder of legendary strength, if you listened to the old reporters wax on about the issue. “Old Iron Pants” is a nickname that has nothing whatever to do with reportorial ability, talent or luck. It instead refers to the ability of Cronkite to stay in the game while everyone else had to make a visit to the, uh, clubhouse.

This biography says Cronkite was “unflappable?” No, that doesn’t begin to tell the real story. Cronkite was stalwart, a rock unmoved by waters, gauging the political tides while unaffected (on-air) by his own.

At least, that’s the way I got the story. Anybody got a citation to something more reliable, and different?

As Joseph Pulitzer once said, “Accuracy! Accuracy! Accuracy!” Let’s tell the whole truth.

Resources:

Immediate update: Good grief! “Affectionately named ‘Old Iron Pants’ for his unflappability under pressure” may appear more often than “Cronkite” on Google. Is this another case where the polite, euphemistic explanation has supplanted the more raw, more sensible real explanation?

8 Comments | 1968, Accuracy, History, Humor, News, Newspapers, Political conventions, Politics, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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