The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy

2 Selling the Controversy

31 2 Selling the Controversy B ’  of Mead was so widely reported and so hotly contested in the media, it is reasonable to assume that his books were best sellers, or at least that they were widely read. Yet they were not. Margaret Mead and Samoa received excellent advance publicity, appeared in headline stories in most major newspapers and many magazines around the world, received endorsement as a Book of the Month Club alternate, and was excerpted in Discover magazine.1 Because news coverage was so extensive, Harvard University Press increased the print run from seven thousand to thirty thousand copies.2 Nevertheless, for all of the publicity surrounding it, Margaret Mead and Samoa went through only one edition. The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, released by Westview Press, a small commercial publisher based in Boulder, Colorado, had more modest sales, with one printing each in the hardback and paperback editions. It was not the reading of the books themselves that generated so much attention but rather the publicity surrounding the books. In providing Freeman’s book to the New York Times, Harvard University Press was doing what publishers normally do. The mainstream media—newspapers, magazines, and television shows—expect publishers to send galley proofs of forthcoming books months before actual publication so that reviewers will be able to review them in time for their arrival in bookstores, that is, when they are “news.” If a publisher waits until a book is available for sale, reviewers may consider it “old news.” When Harvard University Press was criticized for disseminating prepublication copies of the book to the media, the director of public relations at the press responded that buzz sells books: “Academics don’t understand publishing. We have a responsibility to make money and generate sales for books as well as to publish books with something important to say. . . . It seemed appropriate to break the story in the news media because we knew there would be a lot of interest. . . . People say it’s been known for years that Mead made mistakes in interpreting Samoa, but the general public hasn’t known that.”3 The print media covered the story as a major event, but it was television that provided a broader audience. In fact, Harvard University Press decided to bring Freeman from Australia to the United States for a publicity tour. This was unusual for a university press, but in early 1983 the momentum surrounding the controversy was building, and Freeman was in demand. The controversy was so newsworthy that he was quickly booked on major TV talk shows. Harvard was taking a risk in asking Freeman to appear on national TV because he was an untested commodity. Would he be media savvy? Or would he be a liability? As it turned out, Freeman was more than up to the task. He appeared on PBS-hosted TV interviews and on ABC’s Good Morning America with anchor Barbara Walters. Mary Catherine Bateson, a scholar in her own right as well as Mead’s daughter, was included on the program for “balance.” While these appearances may not have enhanced book sales very much, they did expose Freeman and his message to a wide audience. In Person: Freeman’s Appearance on the Donahue Show Freeman’s most important network television appearance came on March 18, 1983, on NBC’s Donahue show, which was taped in Chicago. Donahue was the top-rated daily TV talk show of its era, with millions of viewers, at least the equivalent of the Oprah Winfrey Show today. And Phil Donahue was an intelligent and articulate host, willing to engage his guests, who included not only show business celebrities but also scientists and scholars. During its many years on the air the show earned nineteen Emmy Awards. Donahue took a keen interest in current events and was no novice when it came to the nature-nurture debate, which became the focus of the show. At the time, Donahue was writing a book on human nature, later published as The Human Animal, and so he had a familiarity with this issue. To provide some counterpoint to Freeman, the producers invited Mary Catherine Bateson and Bradd Shore, then an associate professor of anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta. Shore was an excellent scholar who had authored an ethnography on Samoa and had reviewed Freeman’s book for a potential publisher prior to its publication.4 He was therefore one of the very few people truly qualified to appear with Freeman...