The Right of the Story

ABC probably doesn’t want people to think it’s in the business of passing off urban folklore stories as real news, or altering the facts of stories to fit a conservative spin. But that’s what one of its most listened to broadcasters does–six days a week.

Paul Harvey is regarded as a broadcasting icon. An institution. His radio show, distributed by the ABC Radio Networks, is carried on more than 1,200 radio stations and, according to his own press releases, is heard by 23 million listeners six days a week.

Even if you make allowances for self-promotion, his audience exceeds that of talkmeisters Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlesinger. Harvey is advertised as the most listened-to broadcaster in the world.

For more than 40 years, Harvey has been charming listeners with his folksy, down-home style. He calls his broadcasts “visits.” While he is perhaps best known for his Rest of the Story feature, three generations have been brought up on his twice-daily newscasts, a 5-minute morning version and a 15-minute noon broadcast. These newscasts consist of a combination of rip-and-read wire copy, with Harvey’s patented pregnant pauses and unique inflections, along with a sprinkling of anecdotes passed off as news.

Here’s a typical story from his May 1, 1997 broadcast:

A cute story, but one that set off my BS detector. I called the San Antonio Police Department and read the piece to a spokesperson for their public information office. “I have been here two years and never heard of that story,” he said. I also e-mailed the San Antonio News Express. The on-line managing editor, Jon Donley, replied, “I’ve been a journalist here for 14 years and I can’t believe I missed this story.”

Urban Legends

Others have tried without success to track down the sources of some of Harvey’s “news.”

The following story aired on May 5:

After this story aired, Jenny Nelson, a reporter for the Bryan-College Station Eagle, Texas A&M’s local paper, checked into it (5/6/97). She called Paul Harvey’s Chicago office and talked to June Westgaard, his secretary, who told her, “To the best of my knowledge, the story was passed on to Mr. Harvey by a news stringer.”

If so, there’s no telling where the stringer got it from. “There’s a great deal of advanced transportation research going on here, but none of it involves chickens,” Bernie Fette, spokesperson for A&M’s Texas Transportation Institute, told Nelson. “I’ve heard it for at least 15 of the 20 years I’ve been in Bryan-College Station,” a spokesperson for the university said. “I think it’s a story that shows up occasionally. I think it’s kind of an urban legend.”

Jan H. Brunvand is an author and columnist who has published several books on urban legends (among them

The Choking Doberman, The Mexican Pet and Curses! Broiled Again). “I have a copy of Harvey’s book For What It’s Worth (1991) which I annotated for the urban legends I found,” Brunvand wrote in response to my inquiry–“Nine stories, for sure, including several classics. Thus, I take his title to signify that these are ‘worth’ little as truth, but perhaps more as amusing fiction. The trouble is that many Americans get much of their ‘news’ from Paul Harvey.”

Brunvand listed several familiar urban legends documented as folklore in his books–and presented in Harvey’s book as fact, often with names, places and dates attached to lend them spurious credibility. These include the story of the drunk who drives home in a police car; the old, rich woman who rams the car that steals her parking space; the woman who puts an ice-cream cone in her purse upon meeting a movie star. Harvey retells the popular tale of the women who drop to the floor of an elevator when the owner of a Doberman tells the dog to “sit”; usually the dog-owner is a famous black man, but in Harvey’s version his name and race are not mentioned. Writes Brunvand:

Beyond Tall Tales

If Harvey were just telling cutesy tall tales, his lackadaisical attitude toward fact might be more easily dismissed as harmless. But much of his news consists of stories re-cast into Harvey’s conservative mold, presenting a world under attack by welfare recipients, big government and labor.

Take this shot at labor unions broadcast last April 16:

Unfortunately, here, as in many other cases, Harvey failed to tell the rest of the story. As anyone familiar with labor contracts would tell you, it is customary for union representatives to be paid for their work-related union activities, such as handling grievances or conducting collective bargaining talks. This would apply to both public and private sector unions. Hardly the scandal Paul Harvey would have you believe–leaving aside the fact that his biggest example of “taxes” paying for union activity is the postal service, which derives all its revenue from sales of postage.

Another story reflects either outright carelessness or deliberate distortion. This was contained in his April 10 broadcast:

Which spectators were those? According to news reports, written mainly by journalists who were in the press gallery at the time, the incident occurred when Obey confronted DeLay with a newspaper clipping that disputed a point DeLay was making on the floor. The Boston Globe‘s account of what happened next (4/10/97) was typical: “‘That’s chicken shit,’ Delay, the third-ranking Republican in the House, shouted away from the microphone but in hearing range of reporters. He jabbed a finger into Obey’s chest, then shoved him. Several bystanders . . . leaped forward to separate the pair.” While some reporters noted aggressive finger-pointing on the part of Obey, even DeLay acknowledged (Milwaukee Journal, 4/14/97) that the Wisconsinite hadn’t said anything off-color.

Something Smells

But it can’t be carelessness that would account for the next story (4/26/97). It has to be read in its entirety to be appreciated:

A clipping from the Adirondack Journal (1/17/97) tells a much different tale. It seems the Duells owned an apartment building in Olmstedville, N.Y., which, five years ago, developed a broken pipe in the septic system. The Duells refused to make repairs despite repeated warnings. The Journal reported:

In a month of listening to Harvey, there were several other stories that lacked the ring of truth, but contained insufficient information to make fact-checking possible. However, of all the shows I monitored, none was as disturbing as his response to the Heaven’s Gate suicides (4/12/97): “Someday, I am sad to say, our Supreme Court is going to have to specify limits on speech rights and on religious rights.”

It’s troubling to hear such a popular broadcaster making a pitch for restrictions on freedom of speech–especially when he’s used his own freedom to spread folklore, half-truths and propaganda.

Sidebar: The Rest of the Story

On June 9, I wrote the following letter to Paul Harvey:

On June 30 I received the following response, signed by Harvey’s secretary, June Westgaard:

–D.W.

Dan Wilson is a reporter for the Appleton (Wisc.) Post-Crescent.