(THE CONVERSATION) On Tuesday, April 11 – the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover – White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer asserted that Syrian President Bashar al-Asad was guilty of worse acts than Hitler when he used sarin gas on civilians. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect condemned Spicer’s comments and asserted that he was engaging in Holocaust denial – “the most offensive of fake news imaginable.” Evidence suggests that the “fake news” that frequently appeared in at least one Atlanta area newspaper both before and during Frank’s trial helped keep readers’ emotions high and desirous of revenge for Fagan’s murder. Approximately one month before Frank’s lynching, Chicago journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg wrote a scathing piece for the ad-free Chicago daily newspaper The Day Book entitled “How Hearst Treated the Leo Frank Case.” In this passage, Sandburg expressed that he as well as other Americans around the country – including those in the midwestern city of Chicago – were both baffled and frightened by the southern response to the death of Mary Phagan and the overwhelming outcry for Frank’s death as retribution, despite the absence of anything more than circumstantial evidence of his guilt. According to McDonald, the thirst for Frank’s conviction and hanging had been provoked, if not created, by Hearst’s daily newspaper, Atlanta Georgian. Based on the phenomenal sales of the Atlanta Georgian during the Frank trial, McDonald and Sandburg both concluded that Hearst printed inflammatory and unsupported stories about Frank at least in part to sell more papers. Mary Phagan’s murder and Frank’s subsequent lynching led to the B’nai B’rith Organization’screation of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all…” [...] in 1
Comment on What the Leo Frank case tells us about the dangers of fake news
Ingrid Anderson, Boston University, San Antonio Express-News: World
Sun, 04/23/2017 - 7:16pm
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