Getting It Wrong

Many of American journalism&rsquo;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. In <I>Getting It Wrong</I>, 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 the <I>Washington Post</I>&rsquo;s Watergate reporting brought down Richard M. Nixon&rsquo;s corrupt presidency, that Walter Cronkite&rsquo;s characterization of the Vietnam War in 1968 shifted public opinion against the conflict, and that William Randolph Hearst vowed to &ldquo;furnish the war&rdquo; against Spain in 1898. This expanded second edition includes a new preface and new chapters about the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, the haunting <I>Napalm Girl</I> photograph of the Vietnam War, and bogus quotations driven by the Internet and social media.