READ EXCERPT: 'All the News Unfit to Print'

May 27, 2009 — -- In "All the News Unfit to Print: How History Was, and How It Was Reported,"media analyst Eric Burns scrutinized the ways journalists often misreported history.The book is a follow-up to "Infamous Scribblers" in which Burns described how early American journalists often misrepresented events and fabricated coverage, sometimes to serve partisan interests.

Read an excerpt from the book below and then head to the "GMA" Library for some more good reads.

Usually, when people say that journalism is the first draft of history, they are praising reporters for laying a foundation of knowledge that will last the ages. But there is another way to interpret the sentiment—as a warning to historians to build on firmer ground.

This was especially true in the late seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth, when journalism as we know it today was such a novelty that readers were not quite sure what to make of it. Most Europeans and Americans of the time were citizens of a world that seemed so small it did not encourage curiosity, a world "in which news could not thrive as a commodity because it barely existed as a concept." Which is to say that, the occasional explorer and trader notwithstanding, the lives people lived were narrow ones. They were concerned with their own families, their own farms and shops, their own relationship to the Almighty. What else was there? Of what possible interest could occurrences outside his daily realm be to a man? How could they affect his loved ones, his occupation, his nightly communication with his Maker? And how could a person who worked from dawn until dusk find the time to read a newspaper even if he wanted to? The few moments that left at the end of the day for reading would be devoted to the word of God, not the word of a fellow sinner who happened to own a printing press.

It was attitudes like these that were the foundation of modern journalism, and it took centuries for them to change, a process so gradual as to be almost imperceptible.

And because of these attitudes, many of the men who worked for newspapers in the long ago did not take their occupation seriously. Put simply: If the readers were not dedicated to the product, why should the writers be? The latter wanted to earn a living, and on occasion have a lark, more than they wanted to provide the historical record upon which future generations would depend.

As a result, that record has often been riddled with errors, omissions, and pranks. Historians have had to seek sources other than newspapers in their quest for accuracy: letters to and from the principal figures in a certain event, letters referring to the principals from both supporters and opponents, documents produced by lawmaking bodies, artifacts of various kinds, archaeological and geological records—-to name but a few. And, even so, the struggle to know the truth of ages past has often eluded them, and even eluded those living in the past until it was too late for them to respond as they otherwise would have.

We still do not know, for instance, and never will, about the precise deliberations of Parliament for a few years under George II, years when the relationship between Great Britain and its New World colonies was just beginning to fray.

We still think too harshly of the British for the their treatment of Americans that led to the Revolutionary War. We do not, for instance, understand the context of such legislative measures as the Stamp Act, which Americans found a bellicose provocation but their brethren in England had long accepted.

We were so often presented with one-sided views of early American presidents, either heroes or villains that, until fairly recent times, we could not acquaint ourselves with the full range of their humanity.

We have still not discovered the true sentiments of early twentieth-century presidents on a number of topics because they forbade reporters to quote them directly, and reporters were only too happy to acquiesce.

Most of us still do not realize the role of the press, one newspaper in particular, in leading to the deaths of almost 2,400 Americans in a war that never should have been fought.

By refusing to report on the viciousness of Stalin's rule in the early thirties, a reporter sympathetic to his goals encouraged those who read him to be sympathetic to his goals. As a result, countless numbers of Americans were deceived and the entire course of mid-twentieth century history in our country was altered.

We did not know about the drinking habits of legislators that might have affected their votes on crucial issues, or even their attendance when votes were being taken.

THE FIRST LIE EVER TOLD, although the story cannot be confirmed and therefore might be a lie itself, was uttered for the ears of God. Canadian journalist Bruce Deachman writes that in the vicinity of 4,000 years ago, a voice roared through the Garden of Eden, causing tree branches to shake, trunks to quiver, and roots to vibrate. "WHO ATE MY APPLE?" the voice said. The question, Deachman reports, "was met by innocent looks all 'round and, eventually, a timid chorus of 'Not me.'"

Then, only a few days later, the second lie. Deachman tells us that Eve slipped a fig lead over her midsection, sashayed up to Adam and asked him whether it made her look fat. "No, dear," Adam replied, "not at all."Eve looked at him dubiously.

Whenever it really happened, it was understandable, even inevitable, that human beings would find the lie an invaluable tactic for interpersonal relationships, a natural reaction when we found ourselves in unfavorable circumstances. Adam and Eve were afraid of God's punishment; why not deny the crime? Adam was afraid of hurting Eve's feelings by telling her she needed a plus-sized fig leaf; why not deny the perception? In both cases, self-interest seemed better served by fiction than fact.

In Aldous Huxley's 1923 novel Antic Hay, a young man named Theodore breaks a lunch date with a young woman named Emily. The two have recently made love for the first time but on this day he prefers not to take the train back to London where she awaits him for a repeat performance. Instead, he wants to meet with another woman, one whose fleshly pleasures he has enjoyed in the past and longs to savor again, the notorious Vivian Viveash. To do so, Theodore must deceive Emily. He sends her a telegram. "Slight accident on way to station not serious at all but a little indisposed come same train tomorrow."

It is not the only lie that Theodore tells Emily in, but it is the one that sets off social historian Evelin Sullivan in a volume of her own called The Concise Book of Lying. She understands that the reasons for all of Theodore's lies are obvious to readers of Huxley's novel, but seems to be imagining a person opening Antic Hay precisely at the point of the falsehood described above and, having no idea of its context, trying to discern its motive. Such a person, Sullivan believes, would find the possibilities limitless, and she illustrates the point with examples that are sometimes intriguing, sometimes ludicrous. Theodore could have lied to Emily, Sullivan tells,

• To get out of a tedious social obligation.
• To blacken the reputation of a business rival.
• To get out of helping a friend move.
• To keep from hurting his parents' feelings.
• To avoid an embarrassing admission of ignorance or lack of money.
• To keep from his wife the truth about a child he fathered before he was married.
• To have an excuse for missing a meeting considered important by his boss.
• To get a woman to sleep with him by claiming to be a marine biologist.
• To keep secret a crime he committed ten years earlier and deeply regrets.
• To protect himself from harm by the thugs of a police state.
• To remain a closet homosexual.
• To keep from his wife the truth about this having an affair.
• To keep his landlord from knowing he has a cat.

• To cover for a teammate who missed practice and has promised to reform.

• To keep his I-told-you-so father from learning that he has been fired.

• To get even with someone who he knows has done him harm.

• To hide his drinking.

• To get a job by claiming his is a veteran.

• To sell as genuine a fabricated account of his childhood, alleging abuse and neglect.

• To save his young sister from the gallows by confessing to a crime he didn't commit

• To get someone to have unprotected sex with him although he knows he hasAIDS [which, given the fact that Antic Hay was written in 1923, would makeTheodore prescient as well as devious.]

• To bring people around to his point of view on something by inventing supporting anecdotes.

• To keep one of his children from learning a distressing truth.

• To sell his romance fiction by using a female pseudonym.

• To pay less income tax.

Sullivan's list is worth considering not because of what it might tell us about Theodore's relationship with Emily, but because it illustrates the vastvariety of motives that human beings possess for avoiding the truth. She is, however, just beginning. Several pages later, Sullivan gives even more examples, quoting categories of lies from a long since out-out-print book by Amelia Opie called Illustrations of Lying, in All Its Branches. Opie refers to

Lies of Vanity.
Lies of Flattery.
Lies of Convenience
Lies of Interest.
Lies of Fear.
Lies of first-rate Malignity.
Lies of second-rate Malignity.
Lies, falsely called Lies of Benevolence.
Lies of real Benevolence.
Lies of mere Wantonness, proceeding from a depraved love of lying, or contempt for the truth.

There are others probably; but I believe that this list contains all those which are of the most importance; unless, indeed, we may add to it—Practical Lies; that is, Lies acted, not spoken.

Sullivan is still not through. Opie was not detailed enough for her. Other reasons for truth bending, Sullivan states, include: "The fear of losing something—money, a job, a marriage, power, respect, reputation, love, life, freedom, comfort, enjoyment, cooperation, etc., etc.---a better job, admission to a desired school, the chance to hang out with kids our parents tell us to avoid, sexual favors, money, revenge, love, cooperation, respect and admiration, control and power, comfort and convenience, and so forth—-is another. Of course, depending on the liar's mental state, the desire for something may appear as the fear of not getting it; the intense desire to marry the adored creature can become the desperate fear of being thwarted, just as the wish for convenience can be the fear of inconvenience—millions have lied to avoid an argument."

The preceding appears on page 57 of The Concise Book of Lying. The volume's last numbered page is 334. By that time, "conciseness" has become yet another of the book's countless misstatements.

THE FIRST NEWSMEN to lie were probably the first newsmen—which is to say, the minstrels who sang the news, accompanying themselves with a homemade stringed instrument of some sort, in the villages of medieval Europe. They got their information from the nearby courts, speaking to people who had themselves spoken to the king or duke or baron or lord. Then, as they returned to their villages, they composed their "newscasts" in their heads, almost like improv comedians arranging their material to get the biggest laughs.

But surely, one suspects, the minstrels were not concerned with veracity so much as performance. Surely they molded the truth of events to suit the demands of rhyme and the flow of melody. And the press of time; the more quickly they got back to their villages, the more likely they would be able to stake out positions at a heavily trafficked intersections. And just as surely, the men and women who made up their audience, living lives of isolation as they did, not yet believing that events outside their ken could have any significant effect on their own lives, were only marginally interested in veracity. To them it was the music that mattered, not the lyrics. The news was a show, as it would become once again in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, although this time with much more sophisticated orchestrations.