The Origins of Fact-Checking: Tracking Down Rumors Since 1942

[Un article de The Conversation écrit par Pascal Froissart – Professeur des universités en Sciences de l’information et de la communication, directeur du CELSA, Sorbonne Université]

For the moment, only one Boston daily, the Heraldseems to grasp the importance of the subject. Founded in 1846, the Boston Herald is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States and one of the most conservative. It is also one of the most famous because it is crowned with two Pulitzer Prizes, one in 1924, the other in 1927; he will receive six more in the future. […]

THE Boston Herald is a daily newspaper with a small circulation. When we compare it to its competitors (the Post, RecordOr Globe), THE Boston Herald in 1942 was only the fourth daily newspaper in terms of number of copies, 125,000 copies in the morning, and 225,000 copies in the evening under the name Boston Traveler. It also publishes a Sunday version, the Boston Sunday Heraldwhose circulation is also much lower than that of the competition. However, the Herald is renowned for his “hits”. The previous year, in 1941, he made a big splash by recruiting the most expensive sports journalist of the time and making the investment profitable in a few weeks thanks to improved sales.

THE Boston Herald was therefore not really surprising when he set out, alone against everyone, to attack the rumors of war, or more precisely against the “rumors launched by enemy propagandists”. On February 28, 1942, the newspaper announced on its front page the launch the next day of a new weekly column intended to fight against the scourge. The name is obvious: “The Rumor Clinic”. The mission is no less surprising, and described at length: firstly to offer an antidote to the poison of rumor (“an antidote against poisoners and traitors”, it is written); then exterminate the rumor (“the committee of experts of the Herald Sunday will expose the rumors, examine them and exterminate them”); finally, which amounts to the same thing, spraying the rumor (“The Rumor Clinic will use its spray gun on a series of particularly surprising and perverse rumors”).

The tone is found: half-serious when we talk about a “committee of experts” and a “committee of public safety”), half-relaxed since the article is accompanied by an almost funny illustration where the we see a man with a big mouth talking to a woman with big ears under the stunned gaze of a little girl with big eyes.

Then as now, the term “rumor clinic” was intriguing. This is evidenced by the typographical and verbal precautions surrounding the use of terms: here, in the first article, the phrase is surrounded by quotation marks (“Rumor Clinic”). This is also the case in other articles published elsewhere.

We see signs appearing which mark the distance: thus on June 7, 1942 we read in the Seattle Daily Times an article entitled “The Busy “Rumor Clinic””; on August 27, 1942, in the Kansas City Star“A “Rumor Clinic” opens fire”; on October 9, 1942, in the Omaha World-Herald“Praise of the “Rumor Clinic””. Each time, the pairs of quotation marks indicate that the expression has not passed into common language. Verbal precautions will last for a long time. Several months later, for example, on October 15, 1942, a deputy recounted the experience of Boston Herald at the podium of Congress; he immediately gives it the expression “so-called”, twice in a few minutes:

“ Mr. President, […] I respectfully encourage senators who have not yet had the opportunity to read the article to do so. It shows how the City of Boston has committed itself, through a so-called rumor clinic, to tracking down and dispelling rumors which have, it seems to me, a disastrous effect on our war program. I hear that such rumor clinics are or will be developed in other cities. »

Sometimes even, finally, the strangeness is such that the two procedures, quotation marks and verbal precautions, are required: “A so-called “rumor clinic””, curiously says a newspaper of the time. In short, we see, the experience is beautiful and interesting, but it surprises and requires explanation.

As for translating the term into French, only the Quebec daily newspapers were confronted with it (at least, at that time), and they kept it as simple as possible, speaking of a “rumor clinic” (The Press1^er August 1942), even if it means adding a plural to the term “rumors” which does not exist in English.

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To end on the singularity of the term “clinic”, marked by the hospital world, it must be noted that its originality is not total: the rumor clinics certainly evoke medical clinics, but also the numerous collective workshops launched in the 20th century.^e century in the United States to help the underprivileged. It is a long tradition, like that of tax clinics for example where law students help their fellow citizens to fill out their tax forms, job clinics where good souls come to the aid of those looking for work, etc. In 1958, a linguist identified 23 expressions using the term “ clinic », including the “rumor clinic”. The rumor clinic is therefore not very therapeutic, but we will see that in normative terms, the system is not left out.

The next day, as planned, the Boston Herald publishes his column. It is captioned: “Typical Fifth Column Rumors About the Blood Donor Center.” » It is the first column in a long series running throughout the years 1942 and 1943 and it has the honors of the front page: a sub-tribune of thirty lines in two columns, with a reference on the interior pages (“Continued p. 8, section A”), where it continues for a third of a page.

The place given to the chronicle shows the importance we attach to it. The front page and a third of the inside page is no small thing. This can also be explained by the theme of the Red Cross, a key public health body in the United States, a para-state body, whose president is none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt. To affect the interests or the respectability of the American Red Cross is to affect the honor of the entire nation.

“ Today we have chosen to examine a particularly revolting set of rumors about the absolutely vital work being done by the American Red Cross Blood Donation Center, Metropolitan Boston, 691 Boylston Street, Boston. Some of these were spread by word of mouth, some by anonymous typescripts. Whether they were spread deliberately or not, they are what officials call “typical Fifth Column rumors.” We'll take them here one by one. First the rumor is cited, then its falsity is demonstrated by the competent official authority. » (The Boston Herald1^er March 1942)

The tone is serious: the rumors are “particularly revolting”. The style is precise: the address of the donation center is given in fullwhich is not rare but symptomatic. The harshness of the war is recalled: the theme of the Fifth Column is evoked, a current discourse on the presence of Nazi spies on American soil. Finally, the rhetorical plan is detailed: first we present the rumor, then an expert delivers a denial; the argument seems impeccably simple, easy to understand, ideal for convincing.

The fight against rumors therefore begins here.