"All the news that's fake, we print"...

Our title today paraphrases the slogan taken for the New York Times by then publisher, Adolph Simon Ochs, in which he attempted to underscore honest, accurate reporting of the day's events...In this age when so-called "fake news" has become news itself, I took a little time out to expand a paragraph I wrote in my review of  William Shirer's "The Nightmare Years"...

Not a new phenomenon by any means, "fake news" was brought to almost an art form under the direction of Joseph Goebbels and his Reich Ministry of Propaganda as he also had the advantage of a captive and gullible audience...In a time when German citizens were subject to beheading for the monstrous crimes of listening to alternate news sources, such as Britain's BBC, the outside world mostly took Nazi press releases with a large grain of salt...

But even they were fooled on occasion, especially when they really wanted to believe something...During the opening episodes of the sea war between His Majesty's Navy and the German Kriegsmarine, fake news was strewn about from all sides in the hope of bolstering the spirits of the belligerents...But, as history proves time after time, the truth always surfaces...

On December 13, 1939, the German "pocket battleship," Admiral Graf Spee, was found and trapped by three Royal Navy cruisers in the South Atlantic where it had been raiding British shipping...Both belligerents had played their strong cards well, the RN knowing it had the strategic advantage in relying on its own support ships for cover, repair and replenishment, while still in danger from Graf Spee's superior firepower...

Graf Spee's overpowering gunnery gave it the tactical advantage, but its commander, Captain Hans Langsdorff, knew the ship was doomed if it became damaged enough to prevent escape towards its home port...Unable to break out of the River Plate estuary, Langsdorff used every advantage against the three cruisers, severely crippling Exeter, forcing its retirement...This allowed Graf Spee to shelter itself in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay with a badly damaged fuel system...Unable to effect repairs in the 72 hours allotted by its host port, Captain Langsdorff ordered the ship scuttled at sea rather than risk capture by the Royal Navy...

Both the English and German press offered their own accounts of the action...British newspapers reported accurately...The Nazi-controlled Berlin papers first blared a great victory by Graf Spee as it defeated the Royal Navy fleet singlehandedly, while suffering superficial damage...Three days later, the German press regrouped, running stories of how the pocket battleship, unable to avoid the outnumbering British fleet, was scuttled on leaving Montevideo, with its captain "following his ship" to the bottom rather than being captured...

Shirer later pieced together the truth that Langsdorff was not even aboard the Graf Spee when its crew sank it, having stayed behind in port to await further orders...Those orders came directly from an infuriated Fuehrer who demanded the suicide of Langsdorff for scuttling his ship rather than fighting to the last man...The ship's commander then dutifully blew his own brains out with a revolver shot in his Montevideo hotel room...Hitler's fake news put a heroic spin to the story for the German public who learned the truth later anyway...

But the same reporting strategy could cut both ways as Winston Churchill learned the hard way...When the British flagged Royal Sceptre was sunk in the Atlantic by shots from the deck gun of U-48, London newspapers reported it as an unwarned attack in which all crew and passengers were presumed lost at sea...Without confirming the story, First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill (before he became Prime Minister), was forced to admit before the House of Commons that the U-boat commander, Kapitanleutnant Herbert Schultze, had radioed him personally stating the coordinates of the sinking, requesting him to pick up the survivors...

Churchill also reported that the U-boat commander had been captured, and was in British custody, which the Nazi press vehemently denied...The always alert, and ever skeptical Shirer scored a personal interview with Schultze in which he confirmed he had sent the tongue-in-cheek message to Churchill, and also radioed the British ship Browning the exact whereabouts to effect the rescue...This the British denied, until it became known that the Browning had indeed picked up the survivors who were all safely ashore on British territory...

Still skeptical, Shirer had Schultze produce his ship's logbook which he found to contain the text and transmission times of both messages...He also said Churchill's boast of capturing the U-boat commander was premature at best...Presumably Churchill learned to better vet his sources before any public pronouncements, a lesson that could be well considered by today's politicians who still seem to prefer blame after rather than research before...

Even a sage thinker, such as Truckman, can be led down a primrose path paved with falsehoods laid down by one whose intentions were evil from the beginning, as evidenced by his last visit to divorce court...This is one reason he no longer listens to media broadcasters reading prepared news items using the interpretations they were instructed to bring into play...He reads news releases from varying sources, then makes his own judgments, many times believing none of them...

The ancient adage, "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see," has been variously attributed to Ben Franklin, Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Clemens, and numerous anonymous sources...The oldest I can find is from the First Book of John, fourth chapter of my King James version of the Holy Bible:

"Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world."

From any source you choose, vetting your sources is just good advice...

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