Hoover's FBI and the fourth estate : the campaign to control the press and the Bureau's image

Resource Information

The work Hoover's FBI and the fourth estate : the campaign to control the press and the Bureau's image represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Hoover's FBI and the fourth estate : the campaign to control the press and the Bureau's image

Title remainder

the campaign to control the press and the Bureau's image

Statement of responsibility

Matthew Cecil

Creator

• Cecil, Matthew

Author

• Cecil, Matthew

Subject

• Journalism -- Objectivity -- United States -- History
• Journalism -- Political aspects
• Government and the press -- United States -- History
• United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation -- History
• Public relations -- United States -- History
• Hoover, J. Edgar, (John Edgar), 1895-1972

Language

eng

Summary

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was an agency devoted to American ideals, professionalism, and scientific methods, directed by a sage and selfless leaderand anyone who said otherwise was a nogood subversive, bent on discrediting the American way of life. That was the official story, and how J. Edgar Hoover made it stickrunning roughshod over those same American idealsis the story this book tells in full for the first time. From Hoover's first tentative media contacts in the 1930s to the Bureau's eponymous television series in the 1960s and 1970s, FBI officials labored mightily to control the Bureau's image--efforts that put them not-so-squarely at the forefront of the emerging field of public relations. In the face of any journalistic challenges to the FBI's legitimacy and operations, Hoover was able to create a benign, even heroic counter narrative, thanks in part to his friends in newsrooms. Matthew Cecil's own prodigious investigation through hundreds of thousands of pages from FBI files reveals the lengths to which Hoover and his lackeys went to use the press to hoodwink the American people. Even more sobering is how much help he got from so many in the press. Conservative journalists like broadcaster Fulton Lewis, Jr. and columnist George Sokolsky positioned themselves as "objective" defenders of Hoover's FBI and were rewarded with access, friendship, and other favors. Some of Hoover's friends even became adjunctFBI agents, designated as Special Service Contacts who discreetly gathered information for the Bureau. "Enemies," on the other hand, were closely monitored and subjected to operations that disrupted their work or even undermined and ended their careers. Noted journalists like I. F. Stone, George Seldes, James A. Wechsler, and many others found themselves the subjects of FBI investigations and, occasionally, named on the Bureau's "custodial detention index," targeted for arrest in the case of a national emergency. With experience as a political reporter, a press secretary, and a scholar and professor of journalism and public relations, Matthew Cecil is uniquely qualified to conduct us through the maze of political intrigue and influence peddling that markand often maskthe history of the FBI. His work serves as a cautionary tale about how manipulative government agents and compliant journalists can undermine the very institutions and ideals they are tasked with protecting. --Provided by publisher

Biography type

contains biographical information

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

363.25092

Illustrations

• illustrations
• portraits

Index

index present

LC call number

HV8144.F43

LC item number

C426 2014

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography