PRESIDENT TRUMAN DEALING WITH FAKE NEWS "Dewey Defeats Truman" was an incorrect banner headline on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune on November 3, 1948
1. Dewey Defeats Truman" was an
incorrect banner headline on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune on
November 3, 1948,
As a presidential candidate,
Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York was not a glad-hander, not a flesh-presser. He
was stiff and tended toward pomposity. "The only man who could strut
sitting down" was the crack that made the rounds. But on Nov. 2, Election Day,
an overwhelming sense of inevitability hung about the Republican nominee. The
polls and the pundits left no room for doubt: Dewey was going to defeat President
Harry S. Truman. And the Tribune would be the first to report it.
Arguably the most famous
headline in the newspaper's 150-year history, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN is every
publisher's nightmare on every election night. Like most newspapers, the
Tribune, which had dismissed him on its editorial page as a
"nincompoop," was lulled into a false sense of security by polls that
repeatedly predicted a Dewey victory. Critically important, though, was a
printers' strike, which forced the paper to go to press hours before it
normally would.As the first-edition deadline approached, managing editor J. Loy
"Pat" Maloney had to make the headline call, although many East Coast
tallies were not yet in. Maloney banked on the track record of Arthur Sears
Henning, the paper's longtime Washington correspondent. Henning said Dewey.
Henning was rarely wrong. Besides, Life magazine had just carried a big photo
of Dewey with the caption "The next President of the United States."
By Tim Jones
Staff Reporter
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment