{"id":9038,"date":"2017-04-24T05:08:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T05:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9038"},"modified":"2017-04-25T05:10:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:10:05","slug":"what-the-leo-frank-case-tells-us-about-the-dangers-of-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-the-leo-frank-case-tells-us-about-the-dangers-of-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Leo Frank case tells us about the dangers of fake news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ingrid Anderson<\/a>, Boston University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, April 11 \u2013 the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover<\/a> \u2013 White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer<\/a> asserted that Syrian President Bashar al-Asad was guilty of worse acts than Hitler when he used sarin gas<\/a> on civilians. \"The<\/p>\n

Spicer said,<\/a> \u201c\u2026someone as despicable as Hitler\u2026didn\u2019t even sink to using chemical weapons\u201d<\/a> on his people. The Nazis, as facts have shown, used Poison Zyclon B gas starting in 1939<\/a> on Germany\u2019s mentally ill and physically disabled populations. Later, gas chambers became part of the Reich\u2019s genocidal program in death camps.<\/p>\n

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect condemned Spicer\u2019s comments and asserted that he was engaging in Holocaust denial \u2013 \u201cthe most offensive of fake news imaginable.<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cFake news\u201d is not a new phenomenon, nor is it always harmless. I am a Jewish studies scholar. My research in the history of anti-Semitism shows
\nthat in 1913, \u201cfake news\u201d was used to feed into people\u2019s fears and prejudices in America. <\/p>\n

A particularly poignant story relates to the wrongful conviction of an innocent man named Leo Frank. <\/p>\n

Who was Leo Frank?<\/h2>\n

Leo Frank<\/a> was a young Jewish-American factory superintendent, who in 1913 was convicted of the rape and murder of a 13-year-old employee named Mary Phagan, whose body was found in the factory basement. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n In this Aug. 3, 2015 photo, Mary Phagan Kean holds a portrait of her great-aunt, Mary Phagan, as she poses for a photo next to her grave, left, in Marietta, Georgia.<\/span>
\n AP Photo\/David Goldman<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Frank case<\/a> was symbolic of many of the South\u2019s fears at that time. Frank was a former New Yorker educated at Columbia University, and was for many southerners representative of the influx of northern businesspeople moving south to profit from the reorganization of a formerly agrarian society. That Frank was Jewish simply exacerbated these feelings. The evidence against Frank was circumstantial, but the jury found him guilty in less than four hours while crowds outside the courthouse shouted, \u201cHang the Jew.\u201d <\/p>\n

Frank was sentenced to death, and his initial appeals were denied. But on the recommendation of the presiding judge and additional new testimony, the governor of Georgia eventually commuted Frank\u2019s sentence to life. <\/p>\n

This did not placate the anger of the public, however. The governor attempted to protect Frank from mob violence by moving him to a state facility. But, on August 15, 1915, about 25 men launched an armed attack on the penitentiary. After cutting all the telephone wires leading into the facility, they seized the barracks where Frank was held and took him to Marietta, Georgia, where they hanged him near a crossroads<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Evidence suggests that the \u201cfake news\u201d that frequently appeared in at least one Atlanta area newspaper both before and during Frank\u2019s trial helped keep readers\u2019 emotions high and desirous of revenge for Fagan\u2019s murder. <\/p>\n

Approximately one month before Frank\u2019s lynching, Chicago journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg<\/a> wrote a scathing piece for the ad-free Chicago daily newspaper The Day Book<\/a> entitled \u201cHow Hearst Treated the Leo Frank Case.\u201d<\/a> William Randolph Hearst<\/a> was the owner of media company Hearst Communications and publisher of America\u2019s largest newspaper chain.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Photo from April 1915, before Leo Frank exhausted his final appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/span>
\n Leo Frank<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The following opening passage from Sandburg\u2019s piece expresses the intensity of American response to the Frank case:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cA whole lot of good people in Chicago wondered what all there was behind that Leo Frank case down in Atlanta. When a crowd of people go crazy and want to hang a man on little or no evidence\u2026we don\u2019t like it. This story is about things that happened in Atlanta. Yet it has a straight connection to Chicago. What happened in Atlanta can happen in Chicago.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In this passage, Sandburg expressed that he as well as other Americans around the country \u2013 including those in the midwestern city of Chicago \u2013 were both baffled and frightened by the southern response to the death of Mary Phagan and the overwhelming outcry for Frank\u2019s death as retribution, despite the absence of anything more than circumstantial evidence of his guilt.<\/p>\n

Sandburg used evidence collected by another Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, A.B. McDonald<\/a>, to \u201cfind out what made Atlanta crazy and how.\u201d According to McDonald, the thirst for Frank\u2019s conviction and hanging had been provoked, if not created, by Hearst\u2019s daily newspaper, Atlanta Georgian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

McDonald traced no fewer than six stories<\/a> about the Frank case appearing shortly after Frank\u2019s arrest that were proven to be \u201cfake news.\u201d Two of those stories warranted official retractions (but that was done in small print, in the back pages of the paper), while another four were proven false in court. <\/p>\n

Fake news and public emotions<\/h2>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Both Foster Coates, a managing editor for Hearst, and Arthur Brisbane, editor of the Atlanta Georgian,<\/a> attempted to persuade Hearst that Frank had not received a fair trial, and that it was the Atlanta Georgian\u2019s<\/a>
\nduty to calm public passions and demand justice for Frank. But Hearst flatly refused<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n William Randolph Hearst is seen working in his suite aboard the S.S. Europa during a transatlantic crossing in 1931.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sandburg concluded<\/a> that Hearst \u201cwanted Leo Frank choked dead by a rope\u2026for a murder not proven in a fair trial.\u201d Frank was murdered by a lynch mob a month later. <\/p>\n

The Frank trial had lasting consequences. Mary Phagan\u2019s murder and Frank\u2019s subsequent lynching led to the B\u2019nai B\u2019rith Organization\u2019s<\/a> creation of the Anti-Defamation League<\/a>, an organization founded<\/a> to \u201cstop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all\u2026\u201d This was especially meaningful because Frank was himself the president of B’nai B’rith\u2019s Atlanta chapter before his arrest in 1913.<\/p>\n

A dark outcome of the Frank case was the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan<\/a> in 1917. The group\u2019s revival is directly attributed to the Frank trial, which also inspired them to target Jews as well as black Americans with violence, hatred and bigotry.<\/p>\n

Why this matters<\/h2>\n

Finally, in 1982, Frank was cleared of all charges<\/a> after an 83-year-old man named Alonzo Mann gave a sworn statement to the newspaper The Tennessean<\/a> claiming that Jim Conley, who worked in the factory as a janitor at the time of Phagan\u2019s death, was in fact the real murderer. <\/p>\n

Mann had even seen Conley lugging Phagan\u2019s body into the factory basement, but was threatened by Conley into silence. Mann passed both a lie detector test and a psychological stress evaluation.<\/p>\n

Leo Frank\u2019s plight is a reminder of the toxicity of fake news.<\/p>\n

Ingrid Anderson<\/a>, Lecturer, Arts & Sciences Writing Program, Boston University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ingrid Anderson, Boston University On Tuesday, April 11 \u2013 the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover \u2013 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. Spicer said, \u201c\u2026someone as despicable as Hitler\u2026didn\u2019t even sink to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[2134,1617,2235,1607,2003],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9040,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9038\/revisions\/9040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}