Historic Events Reporting in Newspapers

[ssgenius]

Obviously, with Facebook and Twitter, Events are reported in literally real time and there is the 24 hour news cycle
Looking at major events historically in Major Newspapers shows that even 100+ years ago, the reporting was not as delayed as one would perceive

Some examples

April 1912 - Sinking of the Titanic - The day after had conflicting reports but every day after that, the reports in the newspapers were fairly accurate which each day giving more details

July - August 1914 - The events leading up to the Start of WW1 are fairly well detailed. The only thing that was consistently wrong is the prediction that the war would be over soon before the end of 1914

November 11, 1918 - The days before WW1’s end actually had a fairly good grasp that this war was going to end soon and there was a truce coming

August - September 1939 - Many stories about Germany mobilizing troops on the Poland side and a prediction of WW2 starting

Pre June 22 1941 - Numerous reports about German troops massing on the Russian side, This “surprise” attack doesn’t appear to be as much as a surprise as it was historically shown

August 6 , 1945 - The Atomic bombing of Japan is actually fairly well detailed as well as the details of the Manhattan Project in the days afterwards.

October 4, 1957 - Fairly detailed story on Sputnik which got even more details in the days afterwards

April 12, 1961 - Fairly detailed story on Yuri Gagarin’s flight around the earth even to some speculation that he had parachuted out of his capsule

July 1969 - Fairly detailed story on the progress of Apollo 11 even to the point where Neil Armstrong reported that this flight was relatively uneventful while journeying to the moon.

Just going through the newspapers that are archived online and then reading some of the details on Wikipedia or other sources afterwards, I find that even 50 - 100 years ago, the reports in the newspapers are surprising accurate on major events.
Of course, one can always find exceptions to the rule such as “Dewey defeats Truman”

What is even funnier is some of the ads in the papers. especially the ones 100+ years ago

[ssgenius]

I reread my post and the point that I am trying to make is that the newspaper reports of even 50 years generally had the basic information correct for most of the major current events.

Some of the specifics are missing in these initial reports but overall, I found them to be surprising accurate.

[panache45]

And on the other hand, Facebook and Twitter reporting isn’t exactly known for its accuracy.

[ssgenius]

Yes, I agree on that about Facebook and Twitter and the difficult part is trying to assimilate this overflow of information that is currently available.

Suppose there was Twitter in WW1 or WW2.

Both wars would end up being much different and I suspect both would have been over quicker.

[Martini_Enfield]

I think it depends where you are - I did some research years ago and before the advent of telegraph etc, it was not unusual for major events to be reported months after the fact.

One example that stuck in my mind was one of New Zealand’s major newspapers reporting on Custer’s defeat at Little Bighorn two or three months later with what we’d call a “brief” nowadays - basically 150 words or so to the effect that a Gen Geo. A Custer, famed Indian Fighter, and his men had been wiped out by a part of Sioux at a place in the American West called Little Bighorn.

Here’s an example from an Australian newspaper of the time, dated 23 August 1876 - two months after the battle - reporting on it as breaking news.

[Alley_Dweller]

@Martini_Enfield

I think it depends where you are - I did some research years ago and before the advent of telegraph etc, it was not unusual for major events to be reported months after the fact.

One example that stuck in my mind was one of New Zealand’s major newspapers reporting on Custer’s defeat at Little Bighorn two or three months later with what we’d call a “brief” nowadays - basically 150 words or so to the effect that a Gen Geo. A Custer, famed Indian Fighter, and his men had been wiped out by a part of Sioux at a place in the American West called Little Bighorn.

Here’s an example from an Australian newspaper of the time, dated 23 August 1876 - two months after the battle - reporting on it as breaking news.

That’s a very interesting article in the archive. Thanks for the link. However, I have to ask about this segment:

Though the Indians were yelling on every hand
and firing into a retreating force at short range,
they gained the Summit, and just as they reached
it eight men, shot on the way up, fell from their
horses. Lieutenant Matthews at once set about
building barracks for a hospital. Dead animals
and dead men were used for this purpose, as
well as stores for pack animals. Those who fell
in the retreat were placed under Porter’s charge,

I did check the transcript against the image of the original paper and that’s what it says. Dead animals and dead men were used to build a barracks? Ewww.

(I copied a little more text than necessary just to make sure I wasn’t taking anything out of context.)

[ssgenius]

Thanks

I knew that there would be exceptions to the rule and this event was 140 years ago.

I had limited this to roughly 100 years with what I using for examples

[Aspidistra]

The spread of the telegraph in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries must have had significant impact on the speed of news propagation. Even your earliest example - the Titanic did sink in the middle of nowhere, but it was going from a first-world industrialised city to a first-world industrialised city, so the infrastructure was definitely there to transmit reports quickly.

I read a fascinating book last year called The Peculiar Case of the Electric Constable which details a murder case from the mid-nineteenth century which was solved with the help of the then-newfangled “telegraph” thingy. Essentially, the murderer committed his crime, didn’t make much effort to hide what had happened, but instead made for the nearest train station thinking it would be easy to evade capture once he’d hopped on a train. Instead, for the first time ever they managed to wire ahead and have someone waiting to follow him once he’d got off.

It must have been just as great a culture shock to suddenly have to deal with this possibility of messages travelling faster than you could, as it was to deal with the spread of the Internet in the '90s

[DrFidelius]

I believe the major difference between today’s social media “reporting” of events and that of newspapers in days gone by is that newspapers had editors who would choose which stories to run. Yes, they were trying to get as many eyeballs as possible with their headlines, but they also (most of them anyway) felt an obligation to get the story straight before publishing.

Today any person with a smart phone can “publish” any nonsense they encounter.

[ssgenius]

Thanks

Interesting to see how the Telegraph back around the turn of the century really changed on the speed of things reported.

[jtur88]

I once looked up an old college buddy, who became a deputy sheriff in a rural Mississippi county. He told me about a tornado several years before. The newspapers kept phoning to ask for updated death numbers. The first day, there were about ten, and up to twenty by the end of the next day, and then on the third day, still higher. Then the media stopped phoning. After a week or two, he death toll went over a hundred, a fact that never got reported by the news media. He said farmers plowing their fields the following spring were still finding additional bodies.

[Chihuahua]

@DrFidelius

I believe the major difference between today’s social media “reporting” of events and that of newspapers in days gone by is that newspapers had editors who would choose which stories to run. Yes, they were trying to get as many eyeballs as possible with their headlines, but they also (most of them anyway) felt an obligation to get the story straight before publishing.

Today any person with a smart phone can “publish” any nonsense they encounter.

This. There used to be gatekeepers to the industry who did their best to filter the bad information and the crank writers. As barriers to entry dropped, so did quality. Now any random loser can publish anything, even if it is deliberately false.

There also used to be a sense that journalists were performing a public service. The nightly news, for example, was seen as a non- or low-profit service that the networks were obligated to perform for the public benefit. Eventually someone discovered that the news could be highly lucrative, and so otherwise-reputable news sources became compromised by sensationalism, speculation, and political hate-baiting. And now we have Fox News.

[Martini_Enfield]

@ssgenius

Interesting to see how the Telegraph back around the turn of the century really changed on the speed of things reported.

Exactly - here’s a report from the Sydney Morning Herald dated April 16, 1912 about how the Titanic had struck an iceberg and was sinking.

Considering the ship hit an iceberg in the middle of the night in the North Atlantic and had sunk by 2.30am on April 15 , the fact a newspaper in Australia - on quite literally the other side of the planet - had a story about the fact it was sinking quite literally the next day (and the fact it had already sunk probably wouldn’t have been known by the time the edition was put to bed, because of the time difference) is, quite frankly, remarkable.

That’s actually not a heck of a lot slower than I’d expect a newspaper to have a report in its print edition on a similar magnitude event nowadays, to be honest.

[Nava]

@DrFidelius

I believe the major difference between today’s social media “reporting” of events and that of newspapers in days gone by is that newspapers had editors who would choose which stories to run. Yes, they were trying to get as many eyeballs as possible with their headlines, but they also (most of them anyway) felt an obligation to get the story straight before publishing.

Today any person with a smart phone can “publish” any nonsense they encounter.

And the urgency to get the news on the online edition leads to amounts of spelling, grammar and accuracy errors which twenty years ago would have been considered unacceptable by anybody but tabloids.

[Aspidistra]

And on the other hand, fifty years earlier, the first reports of Lincoln’s assassination seem to have reached Australia about the 24th of June, two months after the actual event.

(in response to Martini Enfield’s post)

[ssgenius]

@Martini_Enfield

Exactly - here’s a report from the Sydney Morning Herald dated April 16, 1912 about how the Titanic had struck an iceberg and was sinking.

Considering the ship hit an iceberg in the middle of the night in the North Atlantic and had sunk by 2.30am on April 15 , the fact a newspaper in Australia - on quite literally the other side of the planet - had a story about the fact it was sinking quite literally the next day (and the fact it had already sunk probably wouldn’t have been known by the time the edition was put to bed, because of the time difference) is, quite frankly, remarkable.

That’s actually not a heck of a lot slower than I’d expect a newspaper to have a report in its print edition on a similar magnitude event nowadays, to be honest.

That is exactly my point, the general focus of the story is correct but the details are quite a bit off on that day.

Go to the day later (April 17, 1912) and see what the Sydney Herald has posted

"News has reached New York that the

Titanic has sunk, and that the Carpathia is

carrying the survivors.

It is known that 675 persons have been

saved, but it is feared that many have

perished.

The officials of the White Star Company
believe that 1500 of the Titanic’s passengers

have been drowned."

That is very close to the actual survivors and the number of dead and this is only 2 days later in Australia, no less

[jtur88]

@Chihuahua

This. There used to be gatekeepers to the industry who did their best to filter the bad information and the crank writers. As barriers to entry dropped, so did quality. Now any random loser can publish anything, even if it is deliberately false.

No, the opposite is true. When I worked as a reporter in the 60s and 70ss, the term “fact-check” did not exist. A reporter filed a story, it was printed as is, with alleged facts unquestioned by an editor. Nowadays, the newsroom has staff who do nothing but fact-check, calling quoted people and asking if they actually said what the reporter said they said.

Furthermore, nowadays nobody gets anywhere near a news room without at least a bachelors degree in journalism. Fifty years ago, a reporter was someone trained on the job, who had walked in off the street and was perceived as being literate, curious, knowledgeable, and relatively honest.

Nevertheless, what you say about sensationalism is true. Journalism is increasingly creative – It’s easier to make news than to find it, so there are no investigative journalists anymore, just spinners.

[Martini_Enfield]

@jtur88

No, the opposite is true. When I worked as a reporter in the 60s and 70ss, the term “fact-check” did not exist. A reporter filed a story, it was printed as is, with alleged facts unquestioned by an editor. Nowadays, the newsroom has staff who do nothing but fact-check, calling quoted people and asking if they actually said what the reporter said they said.

Not at any newspaper I’ve ever worked at, they don’t. I’ve never heard of a newspaper in this country in the digital era having people whose job it is to be calling story contacts and verifying what they said. That’s the journo’s job - get it right in the first place.

Most newspapers in Australia are haemmoraging journos - they sure as hell don’t have the money to be paying fact-checkers for anything but the very supremely most important of investigative pieces.

Furthermore, nowadays nobody gets anywhere near a news room without at least a bachelors degree in journalism. Fifty years ago, a reporter was someone trained on the job, who had walked in off the street and was perceived as being literate, curious, knowledgeable, and relatively honest.

This is true, according to my dad (and old school journalist who got a job at a newspaper largely by virtue of being good at writing and asking the right questions).

[rbroome]

@jtur88

I once looked up an old college buddy, who became a deputy sheriff in a rural Mississippi county. He told me about a tornado several years before. The newspapers kept phoning to ask for updated death numbers. The first day, there were about ten, and up to twenty by the end of the next day, and then on the third day, still higher. Then the media stopped phoning. After a week or two, he death toll went over a hundred, a fact that never got reported by the news media. He said farmers plowing their fields the following spring were still finding additional bodies.

can you tell us what year this was? And if possible what county?
I am finding it hard to believe that even in MS in the last 20 years, people were simply missing after a tornado.