Books by W. Joseph Campbell

Many of American journalism'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 Getting It Wrong, 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 Washington Post's Watergate reporting brought down Richard M. Nixon's corrupt presidency, that Walter Cronkite's characterization of the Vietnam War in 1968 shifted public opinion against the conflict, and that William Randolph Hearst vowed to ';furnish the war' 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 Napalm Girl photograph of the Vietnam War, and bogus quotations driven by the Internet and social media.

In both countries since the late 1980s and early 1990s, a diverse and outspoken press, free of direct state control, has emerged and taken hold. Campbell shows how the ethos of independent journalism can emerge from disparate sources and dissimilar historical legacies, despite prolonged periods of repression and autocratic rule.

This work challenges conventional wisdom and punctures prominent myths about an important, but much-misunderstood, period in American journalism history - the yellow press period. It demonstrates that the yellow press did not foment the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Explores the succession of remarkable and decisive moments in American journalism during 1897 - a year of significant transition that helped redefine the profession and shape its modern contours. This work introduces the year-study methodology to mass communications research and provides an understanding of a pivotal moment in media history.