The Chicago Tribune mistakenly declares “Dewey Defeats Truman” - November 3rd, 1948

On this day in 1948, the Chicago Tribune wrongly declared Thomas Dewey the winner of the previous day’s presidential election.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that flips through the pages of history to deliver
old news in a new way. I'm Gabe Lucier, and

(00:22):
today we're talking about an actual case of fake news
in the American media. The day when a respected newspaper
famously and falsely declared Dewey beats Truman. The day was
November third, nineteen forty eight. The Chicago Tribune wrongly declared

(00:44):
Thomas Dewey the winner of the previous day's presidential election.
In reality, the race had gone to the incumbent President,
Harry S. Truman, but since the Tribune had gone to
press before the polls had even closed, there was no
way for the paper to know that. So instead, the
managing editor just took a guess on the election's outcome

(01:04):
and ran Dewey defeats Truman as the front page headline.
The prediction was disproved before the ink on the papers
had even dried, but by that point it was too late.
One hundred and fifty thousand copies had already hit the streets. J.
Loy pat Maloney was the managing editor responsible for the
bad call, but to be fair, there were some extenuating circumstances.

(01:29):
Most critically, the Tribune was in the middle of a
printer's strike, and as a result, they had to go
to press much earlier than they normally would have. That
put Maloney in a tough spot on election night. Competing
papers with later deadlines could wait for the official results,
but he didn't have that luxury. The safe play would
have been to run a headline about the race being

(01:50):
too early to call, but then if a rival paper
ran the actual outcome, the Tribune would look outdated and
no one would buy it. As the early addition deadline approached,
Maloney decided to take a chance and print the outcome.
He considered most likely that New York Governor Thomas Dewey
would defeat Truman in a landslide, and again, to be fair,

(02:12):
Dewey was considered the front runner by most political pundits
and members of the press. The most recent polling showed
Dewey leading Truman by a full five points, and Life
magazine was so confident in the outcome that it featured
a photo of Dewey with the caption the next President
of the United States well before election day, even the

(02:33):
Tribune's own Washington correspondent, Arthur Sears Henning, thought Dewey had
it in the bag. In his article, the one printed
under the incorrect headline, Henning went so far as to
say the Republican candidate had quote won a sweeping victory,
which he then characterized as a repudiation of the New Deal.

(02:53):
Maloney saw the polls, read Henning's article, and felt assured
that Dewey was a shoe in. But what he did
didn't realize, or didn't bother to find out, was that
the last poll had been taken in mid October. Not
only that Henning's article had been based on information provided
by Dewey's own campaign manager, complete with all the bias

(03:14):
that entailed. Neither Maloney, Henning, nor the polls had accounted
for all the headway Truman had made during his extensive
whistle stop campaign tour earlier that summer. Knowing that he
wouldn't get much love in the press, Truman had skipped
the sit down interviews in favor of barn storming across
the country, covering nearly twenty two thousand miles by election day.

(03:37):
At one point, he was delivering as many as thirteen
speeches in a single day, and during every one of
them he would earnestly ask the crowd to help him
keep his job as president. That heartfelt appeal helped endear
him to the public as a political underdog, a narrative
that was reinforced by news outlets such as The Tribune,

(03:57):
which had already written off his campaign. Governor Dewey, on
the other hand, hardly campaigned at all. Perhaps he too
had been lulled into complacency by his glowing press and
strong poll numbers. In any case, the election didn't go
the way that most people expected. At about ten thirty
p m. On Election night, not long after Pat Maloney

(04:19):
approved his fateful headline, radio bulletins began reporting that the
race was surprisingly close, so close that when it came
time to print the second edition a few hours later,
Maloney was feeling decidedly less bullish. He ignored the presidential
race completely and swapped in a headline about the state
elections instead, Democrats make sweep of state offices. Maloney's judgment

(04:45):
proved much better the second time around, as Truman was
soon declared the true winner. The president had won twenty
eight of the forty eight states in existence at the time,
securing three hundred and three electoral votes compared to Dewey's
one eight nine. In most cases, the Tribune's inaccurate headline
would have been quickly forgotten. After all, they were hardly

(05:07):
the first newspaper to report something untrue. But the following day,
on November fourth, something happened to ensure the headline would
live in infamy. It happened when President Truman was traveling
back to Washington from Saint Louis by rail. Before departing,
he stepped to the rear platform of the train for
a photo op and was handed a copy of The
Tribune's early edition. The result was a now famous photo

(05:32):
of a gleeful President Truman holding up the headline that
had wrongly predicted his political ruin. One reason Truman looked
so happy in the photo, aside from having just won
the presidency, is that he knows he's getting revenge on
one of his biggest critics. The Tribune, a paper which
leaned conservative, had opposed most of his progressive policies while

(05:54):
in office, and had once even referred to him as
a quote nincompoop in an editorial. Given that it's safe
to assume the photo was planned in advance. Truman knew
that calling a presidential election prematurely was every news outlet's nightmare,
so he made sure that the moment would be preserved
in history for his friends at the Tribune to relive

(06:15):
over and over again. And if you think a move
like that is too petty or unbefitting of a US president,
well then brother, you haven't been paying attention. I'm gay
Bluesier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. You can learn even

(06:37):
more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have any
feedback you'd like to share, feel free to send it
my way by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com.
Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank
you for listening. I'll see you back here again soon

(06:58):
for another day in History class.