Jaime Sánchez, Jr. on Heather Hendershot’s *When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America*

Follow mainstream media coverage of any major event today and you will likely find a social media firestorm rife with accusations of political bias and outright “fake news.” But since when have mainstream news outlets had such a target on their backs? Historian Heather Hendershot argues that the fallout from television coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago “first revealed the possibility of provoking mass hostility toward the mainstream media.” (15) Coverage of the convention catalyzed this new normal by transmitting an unprecedented display of police violence against white youths, scenes that prompted complaints from a largely white, middle-class viewership about the networks’ misrepresentation of the facts and preferential treatment of protesters. As thousands of letters from across the country poured into television network mailrooms, outrage and criticism against the media was no longer the sole purview of an extremist minority but rather that of everyday Americans.

Hendershot brings a unique perspective to this question as a media historian with expertise on the intersection of broadcast media, politics, and culture. Her previous books—covering an eclectic range from William F. Buckley to children’s television—effectively demonstrate how political elites’ manipulation and censorship of media advanced the aims of various ideological projects. When the News Broke continues this fascinating line of inquiry through the case study of the 1968 Democratic convention, emphasizing how journalists fought to preserve network news as an apolitical forum while political actors from the left, right, and center of the ideological spectrum sought to manipulate TV coverage for their respective agendas. In this work of political and intellectual history, Hendershot explores the tense competition for the camera as a potential vehicle for partisan ideas.

Each of the book’s core chapters recount the proceedings and controversies from a specific day of the four-day party convention, with bookend chapters that respectively lay out the preparations for, and consequences of, the convention. The book successfully reconstructs both the technical and tumultuous with an impressive base of television archives, political records, and the personal papers of newscasters and producers. Several complementary themes emerge from this broad array of sources. For instance, careful analysis of procedural challenges on the convention floor give insight to the policy debates that splintered the Democratic coalition in the late 1960s. More broadly, robust context situates the chaotic convention alongside preceding political assassinations and antiwar demonstrations—a tense political climate exacerbated by Mayor Richard J. Daley’s security measures and violent protest in the convention city.

Where this book truly shines is in its masterful analysis of the three networks’ complex decision-making processes of how to cover major political events during the “network era” of television. A commitment to fair reporting was preeminent among the many professional norms that dictated the networks’ curatorial choices at the convention. Anchors and reporters stuck to the ideal of balanced reporting on controversies and protests to retain the trust of their viewers, despite a deluge of logistical, technological, and ethical challenges that tested their resolve. Yet it was this so-called balanced coverage of the convention that also restricted newscasters from digging deeper into important stories or holding powerful figures accountable. Notably, when Walter Cronkite of CBS interviewed Mayor Daley, Cronkite failed to press him on the incredible violence in the streets and his restriction of the free press, “demonstrating how a dedication to ‘fairness’ can backfire.” (225)

Despite these strengths, the book lacks the kind of explicit intervention into the scholarship on polarization expected from a title that includes “the polarizing of America.” On the one hand, party polarization is not the central focus here, given that the Democratic big tent was splitting at the seams when compared to its rival party. On the other hand, Hendershot’s narrative does not indicate mass polarization either, showing how a near-unanimous, bipartisan majority of TV viewers sided with the Chicago Police Department and against the protesters. More viable, however, is the notion that the 1968 Democratic convention was a key inflection point for modern-day media polarization. Did the public backlash against the networks change the media’s rules of political engagement moving forward, or perhaps pave the way for the fragmented media environment (i.e. cable news) that Markus Prior explores in Post-Broadcast Democracy? As likely as these connections are, one is left to speculate given the book’s insufficient encounter with the historical and political science scholarship on the matter.

When the News Broke is a captivating immersion into the chaos that was the 1968 Democratic National Convention, both on screen and off camera.  This text is an incredible resource for scholars and teachers of U.S. history, especially those interested in the intersection of media and politics. It not only recounts the clash between political elites and movement activists at the convention, but also provides a masterclass on the professional norms and technological limitations of a bygone era of broadcast television. Book-length histories of national party conventions are rare, and Hendershot delivers the most comprehensive and nuanced take on Chicago 1968 by looking beyond the Battle of Michigan Avenue.