The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy

1 The Controversy in the Media

23 1 The Controversy in the Media A     journalists write the first version of a story. Other professionals then follow up with more thorough and perhaps more accurate versions. Yet for the general public, a journalist’s version may not simply provide the first version they read or hear about; it may be the only version. There are so many stories and so little time to learn more about each one of them. How much attention can we pay to a single story? And if the story is a good story, a story that we want to believe, does it really matter if it is true? This is how the Mead–Freeman controversy began. It was a good story. Suspicion stalks fame, and because some famous individuals, including prominent scientists, have turned out to be wrong or even fraudulent, Margaret Mead might well become suspect. Freeman’s critique had the appeal of an exposé, putting the controversy on the public’s radar. He would have the first word, and Mead’s defenders would have to play catch-up. Freeman seemed to have understood that the more provocative the argument, the more memorable the headlines , the more attention the controversy would draw, and the more difficult it would be for critics to overcome his initial message and its momentum. Public curiosity is more likely to respond to exaggerated claims than to straightforward explanation and boring details, and Freeman provided a sense of high drama that his critics did not. In considering the controversy from a marketing point of view, the media’s decision to make it a major news story must have been easy. Mead was highly visible, Freeman’s critique seemed believable, Harvard University Press was publishing the book, and Freeman’s credentials as a scholar were impeccable. Add to this mix the intoxicating subject of sex in the romantic South Seas, and the story must have seemed irresistible. It would certainly be entertaining. The reputable New York Times covered the story first, two months before the book was published.1 Following front-page coverage in the Times, wire services carried the story around the globe. Provocative headlines highlighted the brewing drama with titles like “Mead Theories about Samoa Are Challenged” (Washington Post, February 3, 1983), “Bursting the South Sea Bubble: An Anthropologist Attacks Margaret Mead’s Research in Samoa” (Time, February 14, 1983), “Trouble in Paradise” (Washington Post, April 3, 1983), “Samoa: A Paradise Lost” (New York Times Magazine, April 24, 1983), “Tropical Storm: New Book Debunking Margaret Mead Dispels Tranquility in Samoa” (Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1983), and “Angry Storm over the South Seas of Margaret Mead” (Smithsonian, April 1983). Most major newsmagazines and newspapers had similar headlines. Then there were the op-eds. And here the controversy, nominally about an academic subject, became political. Conservative columnist William Rusher wrote that not only was Mead wrong about Samoa but that in the name of science she had encouraged the loosening of moral constraints, condoned “free love” in America, and contributed to the moral decay of a nation.2 Liberal columnist Ellen Goodman wrote that Freeman’s book was akin to intellectual grave robbery and that when all was said and done, Freeman was not the brave man he pretended to be, seeking truth at all costs. Goodman surmised that Freeman sensed that people would enjoy watching the famous fall from their pedestals, especially a well-known woman like Mead. And Freeman’s work was “full of the muckraker’s delight in portraying Mead as a fraud, and more than a little patronizing.”3 Goodman also noted that as more academics weighed in on the controversy, Freeman’s certainties about Samoa looked less convincing. The controversy appeared on the editorial pages of newspapers as well. The Wall Street Journal, the nation’s premier business paper, commented on July 25, 1983, “It now appears that she [Mead] was bamboozling readers with her tales of sexual permissiveness in Samoa.” And an editorial in the Denver Post on February 15, 1983, titled “Anthropological Crisis” stated that as a result of the controversy “the real loser may be anthropology’s reputation as a science. If its methods haven’t made quantum jumps forward since Mead’s day, the whole discipline might find a better home in creative literature.” This Just In . . . News organizations quickly developed lists of experts, apart from Freeman, who could be called for their opinions about Freeman’s critique. But because Freeman’s book was not yet available, these...