Socolow pens Columbia Journalism Review column on media’s performance after Pearl Harbor attack
University of Maine media historian and journalism professor Michael Socolow writes in the Columbia Journalism Review that news outlets covering the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor displayed some of the same bad habits that still plague journalism today. “A look back at the reporting on Pearl Harbor,” writes Socolow in CJR, “shows how little has changed in the way media covers — or doesn’t cover — major events, from a tendency for errors in the early days of a crisis to its use of analysts and outside experts to fill the void created by the lack of actual reporting. This void of information catalyzes speculation and conjecture, and it’s here that journalism starts to crumble.”