#erna smith

Self Portrait, Erna Smith (Hualapai), 1969

When first deciding upon the sinking of The Titanic as our group’s final project I was extremely excited to begin.  Though my only foray into the world of The Titanic was admittedly the blockbuster with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet released in 1998.  However, I was eager to know and learn more.  I took on the task of finding how the event was covered nationally and internationally.  It was amazing what I found, reading all the headlines and absorbing everything that was written, both fact and fiction.  

In the early reporting of the sinking of The Titanic, there were many faulty and inaccurate reports of what really happened on The Titanic.  Many newspapers reported that though The Titanic had hit an iceberg that everyone had been saved, and the boat was being towed to safety.  This was an optimistic, and not at all well researched coverage of what happened. When reports began to come out about what had actually happened it was an awful parallel to what had been released a few days prior.  It seemed that because the world got most of their news from the newspaper that the newspaper thought it to be a good idea to settle people’s fears, before they even had accurate information.

Coverage of the sinking of The Titanic in The United States was always front-page news.  Newspapers scrambled to report on what was going on with the “unsinkable” ship. However, many newspapers reports were biased on the wealthy and upper-class that were aboard the ship.  In a headline for The New York Times, names of the wealthy were in the headline because they were either alive or missing.  It’s 2015, the serious newspapers and media outlets are more focused on facts of a catastrophe and treat who was aboard as not a major priority.

It seemed that while it was a huge catastrophic event in the U.S., it wasn’t necessarily a front-page worthy story abroad, and if it were, some of the reports were grossly inaccurate and sensationalized.  For instance, a newspaper in Austria would take up half a page with wild images of what happened during the sinking and thereafter. The other half would be reporting on the events, but it almost seemed like they used their illustrations to sell more newspapers.  The picture shown above is a French newspaper; wanting to be one of the first with coverage they did not have all of the details. The headline reads, “Worlds Biggest Ocean Liner Hits an Iceberg, Happily it was Possible to Save All 2,258 People on Board.”  An attention grabbing headline of course, but nonetheless ultimately untrue in the fate of the people aboard The Titanic ocean liner.

Doing the research for this project was eye-opening, I had no idea how The Titanic had been covered in the newspapers, and was disappointed that I could not find any radio coverage.  Though, I do believe it’s out there to those privy to that kind of information.  I never gave much thought to how international news covered events, but looking into what was going on at the time in different countries and seeing how their newspaper came to cover the events of The Titanic was interesting to say the least.  Seeing how the project came together and became a cohesive piece was a testament to all the work that our group did

Works Cited

"How Historic Newspapers Covered The Titanic Disaster." Europeana Newspapers. 21 Nov. 2013. Web. 22 Nov. 2015. <http://www.europeana-newspapers.eu/how-historic-newspapers-covered-the-titanic-disaster/>.

"On This Day." New York Times. The New York Times Company, 1 Apr. 1912. Web. 4 Dec. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0415.html>.