Benjamin Goldstein, former Fellow of the Cold War Archives Research (CWAR) program, has published an article in the journal Historical Research. The article was based on the research that Benjamin began through the CWAR Fellowship in 2018 and continued through the Silas Palmer Fellowship at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2019.
Abstract and link to the full article copied below.
This article re-evaluates the trajectory of sensationalism within twentieth-century American journalism and foreign correspondence by examining William Randolph Hearst’s chief foreign correspondent, Karl H. von Wiegand (1874–1961). By following von Wiegand’s activities as a journalist, celebrity, propagandist and diplomatic go-between through both world wars, it argues that post-World War I concerns over propaganda and commercial mass media’s reliability impacted the typically sensational methods of foreign correspondents particularly strongly. In von Wiegand’s case, his exceptionally sensational style, which became entangled in fascist propaganda throughout the 1930s and fell under an increasingly systematic ethical critique, caused his own reputation and ability to impact public opinion to weaken drastically.
View full article here.
Benjamin S Goldstein, ‘A legend somewhat larger than life’: Karl H. von Wiegand and the trajectory of Hearstian sensationalist journalism, Historical Research, 2021;, htab019, https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htab019
