Fredericksburg, 1862-63: News of Battle (2011)

Undergraduates: Alex Linder, Will Bocholis, Nicole Brosan, Will Futrell, Mckay Glasgow

Faculty Advisor: Frank Fee
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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This study examines how the Battle of Fredericksburg was portrayed to readers in the Chapel Hill area. The coverage of two Northern newspapers, The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer; and three Southern newspapers, the Raleigh Register, the North Carolina Standard, and The Richmond Enquirer, were compared to that of the Hillsborough Recorder, an Orange County newspaper. Reports of the Union’s defeat at Fredericksburg included factual inaccuracies within all of the newspapers studied. When compared to Northern papers, the North Carolina papers lacked the frequency of coverage, identifiable correspondents, and illustrations. The Hillsborough Recorder published articles over a month after the battle, and left errors uncorrected. The North Carolina papers tended to rely on letters and excerpts from other newspapers, such as the Richmond Enquirer, which was highly pro-South. The Northern papers, however, provided personalized accounts from correspondents in the field. Overall, while coverage in these newspapers tended to lack reliability, it appeared that Chapel Hill residents received fragmented information about Fredericksburg.