"Is Mr. Bryan a Mattoid"?

It seems that the New York Times of the late 19th Century was about as sleazy as it is now. The target was different, but the methodology was the same: use pseudo-psychology to smear the enemy as unhinged and dangerous, with a hint of religious craziness thrown in for good measure.

On September 27, 1896 - in the middle of the 1896 presidential campaign that pitted Republican William McKinley against Democrat William Jennings Bryan - the Times saw fit to publish an article with the subtle headline, Is Bryan Crazy?

Two days later, the paper followed up with an article entitled Is Mr. Bryan a Mattoid; Leading Alienists Analyze the Democratic Candidate. In the finest Times tradition, the follow-up article purported to be fair and balanced, although the subtitle suggests that the panel of "alienists" consulted was somewhat one-sided: "They Disagree, as Experts Very Often Do - Dr. Sachs Sees a Chance for Physical Breakdown - Drs. Hammond and Dana Think There Is Evidence of Degeneracy - Dr. Spitzka Thinks Lightly of Him - Dr. Collins Wants Fair Play."

You can read the original articles at the links above. In The Presidential Election of 1896, Stanley L. Jones describes the Times's smear as follows:

Probably the most irresponsible development of the entire campaign occurred in the columns of the New York Times. On September 27, [1896,] the Times published a letter signed by an "eminent alienist," in which the writer concluded, from an analysis of Bryan's speeches, that his mind "was not entirely sound," that his presence in the campaign created the possibility that there would be a "madness in the White House," and that Bryan was a man of "abnormal egotism." The writer of the letter added that Bryan's father had been a "religious fanatic and crank."

In the same issue and on the same page the Times editorially expressed its agreement with the writer of the letter. The newspaper, too, found in [Bryan's] speeches the evidence of his mental deterioration. It did not follow, said the Times, that Bryan was insane. Nevertheless, they went on to say: "What, however, most of all entitles us to say that Mr. Bryan is of unsound mind, whether we call this condition unsoundness in English or insanity in Latin, is that his procedures are not adaptations of intelligent means to intelligent ends."

A mattoid, by the way, is "a person displaying eccentric behaviour and mental characteristics that approach the psychotic."

The New York Times Archives

When it abandoned the disastrous TimesSelect program the other day, the New York Times also made its older archives freely available. It's not exactly the most user-friendly system around, but it's valuable nonetheless.

Some time ago, for example, I was trying to document the fact that the Times had fully reported on Senator Jacob Howard's May 23, 1866 speech introducing to the Senate the Joint Committee on Reconstruction's proposed amendment to the Constitution, which ultimately became the Fourteenth Amendment. I understood that the May 24, 1866 edition of the Times had quoted the speech at length, including those portions in which Senator Howard had asserted that the "privileges or immunities" referred to in Section 1 included the rights contained in the first eight amendments.

For some reason, using the term "Howard" did not produce the article, but the term "immunities" did. Sure enough, the article includes lengthy quotes from Senator Howard's speech, including his assertion that "to these privileges and immunities may be added the personal right [sic] guaranteed by the first eight amendments of the United States."

You can see the article for yourselves here; then click on "view full article."

Stringers: David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan Say "Ouch!"

Given the current problems with anti-US and anti-Israeli stringers in the Middle East, it's interesting to read that this is not a new phenomenon:

"Two of the sources upon whom the journalists [in Vietnam in 1963] relied most heavily, Pham Ngoc Thao and Pham Xuan An, were actually Communist agents. . . . Pham Xuan An [pictured] was a member of the international press itself, for he worked as a stringer for Reuters. Muoi Huong, the Communist who recruited both Pham Ngoc Thao and Pham Xuan An, later said that he had told An to become a journalist for the very purpose of influencing foreign reporters. . . . [David] Halberstam [of the New York Times] and [Neil] Sheehan [of UPI] relied heavily on information from Pham Xuan An; Halberstam considered An to be their best source on the South Vietnamese officer corps because of his supposed contacts among the officers. The newsmen's reliance on Pham Xuan An goes a long way toward explaining why the press kept reporting dissatisfaction among the officers in 1963 that did not actually exist."

Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press 2006), at 214-15.

David Halberstam Says "Ouch!"

"[Homer] Bigart's replacement as the New York Times' correspondent [in Vietnam in 1962] was David Halberstam, who like [Neil] Sheehan hailed from the Northeast and was a recent Harvard graduate. Halberstam was twenty-eight when he came to Vietnam. Before he left, fifteen months later, he would do more harm to the interests of the United States than any other journalist in American history."

Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press 2006), at 170.