Newspaper Reports

Facts about Newspaper Reporting

 "It was in the newspaper, so it must be true!" I can't tell you how many times I heard my parents and grandparents say this in my house when I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s.

Long before television broadcasts, people relied on newspapers for their news, so much so that they believed nearly everything they read. There were exceptions like the ads for crazy gadgets like the Electric Belt (shown below) that cured a long list of ailments, ads for patent medicines containing miracle cures, and the many get-rich-quick schemes.

Advertisement for gadgets were big draws

When in doubt, make it up. 

This motto continues to this day. We see it every day in really outrageous stories about celebrities in certain fan magazines and rag newspapers.  

There were conflicting reports about Titanic and the survivors in various newspapers, but they were not always the fault of newspaper publishers or reporters. Most of the time, it came from their trusted sources . . . where they got their news. 

Unless the reporter themselves took the interview down on paper, reports of eyewitness accounts were notoriously unreliable, not only because their knowledge stopped when they got in the lifeboats but if the story wasn't interesting enough, the reporter would take some creative license and add a few details. 

There were some people who embellished their own "eyewitness" account. Some did it because they wanted to see their names in the newspapers. There were others who wanted to praise the Captain and officers during the evacuation. Still others wanted to lay blame on any number of people, including Captain Smith, J. Bruce Ismay (president of White Star) and the designer (Thomas Andrews).    

True accounts or not, eyewitness accounts sold newspapers and reporters worked tirelessly to get as many first-hand accounts as possible. It filled newspaper space and satisfied the curiosity of readers.

Mere hours after Titanic sank, the Evening Sun in Baltimore ran this headline in the late edition on April 15:

"ALL TITANIC PASSENGERS ARE SAFE; TRANSFERRED IN LIFEBOATS AT SEA."

 

False reports

At the bottom left column on the same page, it says that no lives were lost. 

Assured that all were safe, relatives of survivors probably slept good that night, but it would be the last night of good sleep because the next morning, April 16, 1912, their headline read:

 

"GREATEST OF ALL SEA DISASTERS.  GIANT TITANIC GOES DOWN; 1500 PERISH, 675 SAVED. Carpathia Enroute for New York with the Rescued, Mostly Women and Children."

 

The body of the story said:

"Huge Ship Struck Iceberg at 10:25 Sunday night and she sank at 2:20 on Monday morning in the darkness of night and in water two miles deep. The Titanic, newest ship of the White Star fleet, sank to the bottom of the sea at 2:20 this morning."

That was a far cry from the late edition the night before but it shows how things could change overnight.

False Reports

One New York newspaper wrote that they were in receipt of messages to say Titanic was being towed to Halifax by the Virginian. Another message said Titanic was enroute to New York on her own steam, and a third message said "Titanic has sunk."

 

Conflicting reports

For days, newspapers headlines in Europe also said there were no lives lost. More than one newspaper published that over 2,000 were saved. It gave people hope - false hope. 

False hope

Can you imagine the despair felt by their relatives, of not knowing? 

Everyone studied the printed list of passengers looking for the names of their relatives. When their names weren't on the list that day, hopes remained high for the new list in the newspaper the next day.  

Newspaper sales must have been booming because people bought not one newspaper, but many newspapers, looking for new articles that were not published in other newspapers. 

Some articles stated that ships full of survivors were being transported to Halifax before continuing to New York.  But that wasn't exactly true.

The death ships like the MacKay Bennett transported bodies to Halifax for processing after tagging each body with an identifying number. For families who requested their dead to be returned to them, the bodies were embalmed and set aside for transport.  The bodies that could not be identified, or whose family made no specific requests, were either buried in Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax or buried at sea.

 

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This headline in The New York Times was only partly accurate:  

"Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued by Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing."

Obviously the first part of that headline is false. Titanic didn't take four hours to sink. The number of rescued has always been in flux. Carpathia said they brought on 745 survivors. Newspapers published that there were 866 survivors picked up by Carpathia.

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There were some newspapers who had no fresh news so they used the last known details and kept expounding on them, even though there was a strong possibility the details had changed and were no longer true.

Why can't anyone get the numbers right?

No matter which newspaper you read, the numbers were never the same. 

Coupled with many false newspaper reports, the numbers must have been very frustrating for families.

The number of passengers was always within 10 of the actual number.

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The ship's boarding passenger list was not much help when trying to match the living and the dead because there were over 50 passengers and crew members who used an alias when they boarded Titanic. This made the dead very difficult to identify.  Some of the dead had their correct names on an item that was in their pockets.  

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The number of crew was never accurate. This was partly because some crew jumped ship in Queenstown and Cherbourg before Titanic set sail for New York.

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The number of people transferred to lifeboats never matched the names that were later provided. Lifeboats that had more than 30 occupants, only identified 10 or 15 names on the Lifeboat lists.

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The number of dead who were picked up by the death ships were probably the most accurate because they were tagged with numbers in sequence. 

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Some reports said the ship's top speed was 20 knots and others said it was 23 knots.  There were reports from first-class passengers and bridge officers that the ship was going full speed at 23 knots. 

A community thread on Encyclopedia-Titanica  quoted the Wreck Commission's report by saying "just prior to the collision, the ship was making her maximum speed of the voyage - not less than 21 knots (24.5 miles per hour). Further down in the thread, a community member stated that the top speed was 24 knots but did not say the ship was traveling at that speed. 

The Belfast Telegraph published an article (now archived) that claimed Titanic's top speed was 24 knots but also said the ship never achieved that speed. White Star Line owner J. Bruce Ismay was known to push Titanic to its limit. More than once, he instructed the Captain go "full speed" even in the midst of icebergs but it is not known if the Captain ever followed through with that order. The Belfast Telegraph

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The New York Times said Titanic sank four hours after hitting the iceberg. We know now that it was not actually four hours. 

The blog titanicfacts.net said Titanic sank in 2 hours 40 minutes, Wikipedia quoted eyewitness reports saying it was two and one half hours. Some lifeboat passengers said it was 2 hours 20 minutes.

Everyone wanted to be known among the "firsts."  

First passenger on the ship, first lifeboat that was launched, first lifeboat to be rescued, etc.  

It is true that there were a dozen or so passengers who said they were in the first lifeboat to be launched. But they may not have ben aware that there were lifeboats lowered from both port and starboard sides.  

Lifeboat #7 on starboard side was the first to be launched. The boat had 65 seats but only 28 people on board. However, they added more to their boat because Lifeboat #5 was lowered after them and about 4 people left #5 to get in #7.  The numbers changed again when Lifeboat #7 picked up a few men who had jumped off the ship and were swimming in the sea.  The estimates were between 29 and 32.

Lifeboat #8 was the 4th lifeboat to be lowered from the ship, but it was the first to be launched on the port side. There were 28 seats but only 25 people including 4 crew members. 

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