On January 13, 1920, The New York Times editorialized: “That Professor [Robert] Goddard with his ‘chair’ at Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know of the relation of action to reaction, and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react—to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
“After the rocket quits our air and really starts on its long journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so few and fit, are licensed to do that.” (Here is Where, Andrew Carroll, p. 257)
New York Times editorial page July 21, 1969: Under the headline, CORRECTION, the Times ran a three-paragraph editorial that owned up to its January 1920 comments mocking Goddard’s intellect and belief that a rocket could reach the moon.” (Carroll, p. 263)
Carroll also noted: 1. That when Goddard went to Washington D.C. in 1942 to promote rocketry, all military branches rebuffed him; 2. In 1944, more than 3000 V-S rockets, built by German scientists led by Werner Von Braun, killed more than 7000 people in England and Belgium; 3. Werner Von Braun, once in America, observed that “in the history of rocketry, Dr. Robert Goddard has no peer. He was first.” (Carroll, p. 254)
The fact that the Times had demeaned Goddard’s scientific assertions in the 1920s only to retract their criticism in 1969 holds its own intrinsic interest. It also raises other questions that seem pertinent these days when some in political life struggle with what the First Amendment authors meant by “freedom of the press.”
The first question: what other geniuses have been pilloried, their ideas subjected to scorn by critics who have little professional backgrounds upon which to base their critiques? This phenomenon is not new. It took several hundred years for the Roman Catholic Church to acknowledge that Galileo was right.
Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that, in general, genius is counter-cultural? After all, genius disturbs the prevailing norms.
The second question: why is it so hard for people in public life—and I include political and corporate leaders and professional news outlets—to say “I was wrong. I made a mistake?” To be fair, the answer might be that all are human, and a large number of humans have trouble saying “I was wrong. I made a mistake,” and meaning it.
Commenting on TV about recent elections, former Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie was expressing support for a state Constitutional Convention. The TV host noted, “but you have said you opposed a convention.”
“That’s right. I changed my mind. I was wrong,” responded Abercrombie. Note that he is retired, in his late 70s, and free from being concerned about what anyone has to say about him.
It reminded me of a change of mind that occurred in California in the 1970s that made some people mad. Governor Jerry Brown, in his first set of two terms in office, changed his mind about Proposition 13. For changing his mind, he was judged unprincipled. He replied that he had gotten more information, a better perspective, and therefore came to a different conclusion than before. I’m okay with leadership that responds to new information and re-thinks.
Question three: when did a segment of the population become more trusting of Facebook postings, tweets, and blogs, written by anyone, (freedom of speech), than the work of people educated into a set of ethics about reporting, supervised by people who hold their positions based upon their ability to exercise good judgment about what got printed or aired? (freedom of the press.) As the Times story above shows, the professional standard for the press is to correct mistakes, even if they occurred 49 years before!
When teaching US History, I could always draw incredulity from the kids when I noted that Joseph Pulitzer (the prizes named after him are ironic) bragged about his ability to manipulate public sentiment into supporting a war against Spain in Cuba. His example of “yellow” journalism colors how some think about all media. To be sure, there are publications and broadcasters whose starting point is a clear political point of view. That has been true since the US became a nation. Because some outlets are so tilted in their point of view does not mean that all are.
People of a Certain Age, could we not agree that the Framers separated freedom of the press from freedom of speech deliberately? And they understood, “press” to mean, in their day, print media? To be sure, the Sedition Act of 1798 tried to make publishing anything critical of the Adams administration illegal. But that law was allowed to expire in 1801. The Framers, like Jefferson and Madison when they were President, defended freedom of the press even when the press opposed their point of view.
For me, a corps of professionals trained in a common set of ethical principles devoting themselves to holding all those who seek or hold power to regular scrutiny, always exercising loyal skepticism, constitutes the press the Framers sought to protect. When one of those outlets, even after 49 years, comes out and admits “we were wrong,” I think the Framers would be pleased.
Daniel E. White
September 10, 2018