Froth & scum Book

“Froth and Scum: truth, beauty, goodness, and the ax murder in America’s first mass medium,” by Andie Tucher (UNC Press, 1994). Full disclosure: I am and have been a practicing journalist for my adult life (starting in the days when we were called “newspapermen”). I am deeply invested in the concept of objective reporting, and the role of the press as a watchdog for the public. As such, I read this book with intense skepticism from the start. Tucher is a former (Bill) Clinton speechwriter, a documentary producer for ABC News, and now a long-time professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The book won the 1991 Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians. So you can see I am, if not outnumbered, then outweighed. So. Tucher examines the coverage of two sensational New York murder cases: the prostitute Helen Jewett was found murdered, and her room set afire, in 1836. A rakish young man named Richard Robinson, her last known customer, was arrested and tried. In 1841, the body of Samuel Adams, a New York printer, was found stuffed inside a packing case on board a freighter about to leave port. A bookkeeping teacher named John Colt was arrested and tried. Both cases, of course, were tremendous sensations, and the penny press, a group of cheap newspapers that were a relatively recent innovation, had a field day, went to town, whatever cliché you’d like. In the Jewett case, the newspapers published reams of stories about the case, many of them completely made up, full of unlikely information, frequently contradicting one another; in the case of James Gordon Bennett’s Herald, contradicting itself one day to the next. Their writing was flamboyant and rococo, full of flourishes and imaginary descriptions of the people involved. Ultimately, and to the satisfaction of the press, Robinson was acquitted. In the Colt case, on the other hand, the Herald was scrupulously wedded to facts, straightforward observation, and clear reporting. Again, to the satisfaction of the press, the defendant was found guilty and sentenced to death (he escaped by committing suicide just before the execution). Tucher delves into the origins of the penny press, and the society in which it dwelled: confusing, energetic, full of enthusiasm, unsettled, and home to P. T. Barnum and the humbug. The humbug, Tucher explains, is not a fraud. It is a confabulation so clearly absurd or near to it that the audience is engaged: the smart guys know it’s a fake and smile at the fools who are taken in. So journalists partook of humbugs; newspapers were meant for different types of readers from different levels of society. In the Jewett case the narrative was either of the sweet innocent desecrated by the cunning bon vivant, or the siren who lured innocent youths to their deaths. What actually happened did not really matter as long as they told good stories that gave the readers what they wanted to hear. But what the papers did not dig into was the fact that the accused was from a well-to-do family, he had three very expensive lawyers, the judge was also connected, all society was on his side. Why the change by 1841? The society had changed, Tucher says, and the two journalistic contenders---Bennett, and Horace Greeley of the Tribune---were now seeking similar middle class audiences. Greeley was speaking to a rural readership, hated the city, and talked about how awful it was. Bennett, of course, was devoted to the rough and tumble urban life. Greeley was interested in the morality of the case. Bennett wanted the sensation and proselytized for a conviction of murder, not manslaughter. Tucher says that, because he was not as interested in fantasy, he ignored a crucial detail that might have changed the case: John Colt may have been covering up for his brother, Samuel (of the revolver). John supposedly was married to Caroline Henshaw; but she was in fact married to his brother. If Bennett had been as interested in humbuggery, he might have discovered that fact and changed the verdict. Going on, Tucher describes the effect of the telegraph, instantaneous news, the development of the Associated Press. She bemoans the change of news into a commodity, the flattening of the writing to make it acceptable to whomever bought it. One can see, from the writing she provides---and her own style---how Hemingway and unadorned Modernism was a natural reaction to all that flummery. Tucher then runs through the development of “objectivity,” first championed by Adolph Ochs when he bought the Times. She doesn’t seem to like it. She would rather what came before, because it gave the reader a chance to decide: “Replacing humbug with fact meant never having to make a choice,” she writes—sadly, one suspects. So she says that journalism gives readers the stories they want, a variety of truths, not one single “truth.” I think a lot of this book is a humbug wrapped in hyperbolic language. Here’s why: she describes the case of Amy Fisher and the Buttafuocos, a famous Long Island story. Amy, 16, was having an affair with Joey, who would not break up with his wife. So Amy shot her in the head—but she survived. The case, of course, was a sensation all over the place, with docudramas, full-on TV coverage, people being paid for interviews, and so forth. Tucher uses this to show how even today we want different versions of a story. Problem is: all the facts of the story were established and fully chronicled by, mostly, my own paper, Newsday. The hooraw and ruckus and hype were all based on actual fact reported by a straightforward and “objective” press. What people made of it afterward was their business. The journalists, neither Bennetts nor Greeleys, did their jobs. Oh, the title: from Thoreau: the vast majority of men live on the surface and ask only of the news—“the froth and scum of the eternal sea.” I’m just bobbing along.