Abstract
“Many a good newspaper story has been ruined by over verification,” said (“allegedly”) James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of The New York Herald and one of the press barons who paid Stanley to “find” the not-lost Dr Livingston. So he should know.
And here is Nathan Rothschild, leaning against the “Rothschild column in the London 'Change nonchalantly smoking a cheroot as the frenzy occasioned by the news of Wellington's victory at Waterloo swept through the city”. Having bought low the previous day, Rothschild could watch the market rise calmly – and all because his pigeon got to London before the government's bird did.
And here is Brian Cathcart, in his meticulous and entertaining account of what actually happened, debunking the whole thing. Many a good story indeed! This particular one has emblematic force as an early and dramatic example of the potency of information. But there was no pigeon and not much share movement either. The story begins with an anti-semitic pamphlet of 1846. In fact, Baron Nathan had no early information and, although he profited from the rise that did occur in the days after the news of victory was confirmed, he did not do so as much as others who had, in fact, bought earlier.
Cathcart deals thoroughly with every jot and tittle of what happened – down to what Wellington had for supper the night after the battle to the fact that the pickpockets of London were busy in jubilant crowds as the news spread. In tracing down all variants, myths and misunderstandings, Cathcart isolates the four messengers who brought news from Brussels to London. It is a tale of riders, horses, coaches, the weather in the channel, the quality of the roads – and of getting the facts wrong. Cathcart ensures attention by making his account into a species of detective story: who was first with the truth?
He has a good tale and tells it well. But although he gives much detail and context, we stray into the realms of hyperbole with a claim that this is a particularly significant event in the development of British journalism. The muddles, confusions and slowness were all, as it were, par for the course at this time (and later? Ed).
But despite the care with which the newspaper archive has been trawled, the story stands too much alone. There is, for example, little systemic comparison – content analysis – of the papers. They were highly partisan then as now, if far more evenly balanced as between Whig and Tory editorial stances. Reporting Waterloo could afford a case study of how bias works, but that is not really explored except en passant.
Advertising, too, offers a key to broader understanding. The papers were not quite free of direct political bribery – the last revealed instance being to The Observer in 1820. The impact of advertising, though, had been already decades developing. Not the impression given, nor is the import of ad revenue overall explored.
Cathcart does bring a welcome journalist's eye to press history where too often professional historians are naif about the fundamentals of newspapering. But, despite his history degree, he can lack an historian's eye for the broader context. It is true to say the papers then were what we might today call “aggregators”, reprinting from other sources, but Cathcart does not acknowledge that originating material in the modern fashion (from interviews though stunts to campaigns) was seen then as contaminating the processes of observing and reporting. Omissions apart, as history the book is a tad too full of supposition: things are “likely”, “probably”, “there can be no doubt”, “must have been”, “if … then”.
Cathcart notes, but does not follow through on, the impact of the industrial revolution. The Times had installed steam-driven presses two years before Waterloo (which caused Hazlett to suggest that the paper “seems to be written as well as printed by a steam-engine”). But, as Cathcart shows, this gave the paper little or no advantage at this point. Examining why could be a key to better understanding the interface of news production, society and technology at a crucial moment.
As could the whole business of pigeons (not yet in play, as Cathcart points out) and the semaphore (or “optical telegraph”). The incredibly expensive semaphore lines were shut down the moment Napoleon set foot on Elba. Primitive electrical systems were also ignored (as, again, Cathcart notes). Why is this not pursued? That the notion of the perishability of the news had yet to come into play does not seem to have occurred to him. This is a bit of a problem for a study of news dissemination.
So a good read but lot of detailed research is rather reduced to being an entertaining account, in essence, of runners and riders.