Editing Scopes trial (section)

== Media coverage and publicity ==
{{external media | width = 210px | float = left | headerimage= | video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?105855-1/summer-gods ''Booknotes'' interview with Edward Larson on ''Summer for the Gods'', June 28, 1998], [[C-SPAN]]}}
The Scopes trial was covered by journalists from the South and around the world, including [[H.&nbsp;L. Mencken]] for ''[[The Baltimore Sun]]'', which was also paying part of the defense's expenses. It was Mencken who provided the trial with its most colorful labels such as the "Monkey Trial" of "the infidel Scopes". It was also the first United States trial to be broadcast on national [[Old-time radio|radio]].{{sfn|Clark|2000}} [[Edward J. Larson]], a historian who won the [[Pulitzer Prize for History]] for his book ''Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion'' (2004), notes: "Like so many archetypal American events, the trial itself began as a [[publicity stunt]]."<ref>{{harvnb|Larson|2004|p=211}}</ref> The press coverage of the "Monkey Trial" was overwhelming.<ref name="Larson_2004_p_212_213">{{harvnb|Larson|2004|pp=212–213}}</ref> The trial served its intention to bring publicity to the town of Dayton.<ref name="Larson_2004_p_212_213" /> From ''The Salem Republican'', June 11, 1925:
<blockquote>The whole matter has assumed the portion of Dayton and her merchants endeavoring to secure a large amount of notoriety and publicity with an open question as to whether Scopes is a party to the plot or not.</blockquote>

The front pages of major newspapers including ''[[The New York Times]]'' were dominated by the case for days. More than 200 newspaper reporters from all parts of the country and two from [[London]] were in Dayton.<ref name="Larson_2004_p213">{{harvnb|Larson|2004|p=213}}</ref> Twenty-two [[Telegraphy|telegraphers]] sent out 165,000 words per day on the trial, over thousands of miles of telegraph wires hung for the purpose;<ref name="Larson_2004_p213" /> more words were transmitted to Britain about the Scopes trial than for any previous American event.<ref name="Larson_2004_p213" /> [[Animal training|Trained]] [[Common chimpanzee|chimpanzee]]s performed on the courthouse lawn.<ref name="Larson_2004_p213" /> Chicago's [[WGN (AM)|WGN]] radio station broadcast the trial with announcer Quin Ryan via [[clear-channel station|clear-channel]] broadcasting first on-the-scene coverage of the criminal trial. Two movie cameramen had their film flown out daily in a small plane from a specially prepared airstrip. The event became known as the "[[Trial of the Century]]", and has been described as the most-covered trial in American history, with only the [[murder trial of O. J. Simpson]] some 70 years later receiving comparable coverage.<ref>{{cite news |last=Tant |first=Ed |date=May 1, 2024 |title=O.J. Simpson Was Just One Contender for ‘Trial of the Century’ |url=https://flagpole.com/news/street-scribe/2024/05/01/o-j-simpson-was-just-one-contender-for-trial-of-the-century/ |work=[[Flagpole Magazine]] |location=Athens, Georgia |publisher= |access-date=May 14, 2025}}</ref> 

H.L. Mencken's trial reports were vituperative and [[media bias in the United States|heavily slanted]] against the prosecution and the jury, which he described as "unanimously hot for [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]]". He mocked the town's inhabitants as "[[Babbitt (novel)|Babbits]]", "yokels", "morons", "peasants", "hill-billies", and "yaps", and called Bryan a "buffoon" and his speeches "theologic bilge". He chastised the "degraded nonsense which country preachers are ramming and hammering into yokel skulls". In contrast, he called the defense "eloquent" and "magnificent". Even today, some American [[creationism|creationists]], fighting in courts and state legislatures to demand that creationism be taught on an equal footing with evolution in the schools, have claimed that it was Mencken's trial reports in 1925 that turned public opinion against creationism.<ref>{{cite journal |first=S. L. |last=Harrison |title=The Scopes 'Monkey Trial' Revisited: Mencken and the Editorial Art of Edmund Duffy |journal=[[Journal of American Culture]] |year=1994 |volume=17 |issue=4 |pages=55–63 |doi=10.1111/j.1542-734X.1994.t01-1-00055.x }}</ref> The media's portrayal of Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan, and the [[Inherit the Wind (play)|play]] and [[Inherit the Wind (1960 film)|movie]] ''Inherit the Wind'' (1960), have been credited with causing millions of Americans to ridicule religious-based opposition to the theory of evolution.<ref>{{harvnb|Larson|2004|p=217}}</ref>

Mencken, however, did enjoy certain aspects of Dayton, writing
<blockquote>The town, I confess, greatly surprised me. I expected to find a squalid Southern village, with darkies snoozing on the horse-blocks, pigs rooting under the houses and the inhabitants full of hookworm and malaria. What I found was a country town full of charm and even beauty—a somewhat smallish but nevertheless very attractive Westminster or Balair.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Mencken |first1=H.L. |title=Scopes: Infidel |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/122109461 |access-date=October 24, 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=January 12, 1982 |page=A15 |issn=0362-4331|id={{ProQuest|122109461}} }}</ref></blockquote>

Mencken described Rhea County as priding itself on a kind of tolerance or what he called "lack of Christian heat", opposed to outside ideas but without hating those who held them.<ref>Mencken, H.L., "Sickening Doubts About Value of Publicity", ''The Baltimore Evening Sun'', July 9, 1925.</ref> He pointed out that the [[Ku Klux Klan]] did not have a foothold locally, despite is power throughout much of the state.<ref>Edgar Kemler, ''The Irreverent Mr. Mencken'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1948), pp. 175–90. For excerpts from Mencken's reports see William Manchester, ''Sage of Baltimore: The Life and Riotous Times of H.L. Mencken'' (New York: Andrew-Melrose, 1952) pp. 143–45, and ''D-Days at Dayton: Reflections on the Scopes Trial'', ed. Jerry R. Tompkins (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1965) pp. 35–51.</ref> Mencken attempted to perpetrate a hoax, distributing flyers for the "Rev. Elmer Chubb", but the claims that Chubb would drink poison and preach in lost languages were ignored as commonplace by the people of Dayton, and only ''[[Commonweal (magazine)|Commonweal]]'' magazine bit.<ref>H.L. Mencken, ''Heathen Days, 1890–1936'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943) pp. 231–34; Michael Williams, "Sunday in Dayton", ''Commonweal''{{nbsp}}2 (July 29, 1925): pp. 285–88.</ref> Mencken continued to attack Bryan, including in his withering obituary of Bryan, "In Memoriam: W.J.B.", in which he charged Bryan with "insincerity"—not for his religious beliefs but for the inconsistent and contradictory positions he took on a number of political questions during his career.<ref>"In Memoriam: W.J.B." was first printed in ''The Baltimore Evening Sun'', July 27, 1925; rpt. by Mencken in the ''American Mercury''{{nbsp}}5 (October 1925) pp. 158–60 in his ''Prejudices (Fifth Series)'', pp. 64–74; and in https://archive.org/details/mencken017105mbp Cooke, Alistair, ''The Vintage Mencken'', Vintage Books, pp. 161–167.</ref> Years later, Mencken did question whether dismissing Bryan "as a quack pure and unadulterated" was "really just".<ref>Mencken, ''Heathen Days'', pp. 280–87.</ref> Mencken's columns made the Dayton citizens irate and drew general indignation from the Southern press.<ref>"Mencken Epithets Rouse Dayton's Ire", ''The New York Times'', July 17, 1925, 3.</ref> After Raulston ruled against the admission of scientific testimony, Mencken left Dayton, declaring in his last dispatch "All that remains of the great cause of the State of Tennessee against the infidel Scopes is the formal business of bumping off the defendant."<ref>"Battle Now Over, Mencken Sees; Genesis Triumphant and Ready for New Jousts", H.L. Mencken, ''The Baltimore Evening Sun'', July 18, 1925, http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/menck04.htm#SCOPES9 {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061118195330/http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/menck04.htm |date=November 18, 2006 }}, URL accessed April 27, 2008.</ref> Consequently, the journalist missed Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan on Monday.

[[File:Rollin Kirby Scopes Trial Cartoon.jpg|thumb|Cartoonist [[Rollin Kirby]] depicts fundamentalist education in Tennessee taken to an extreme]]

Anticipating that Scopes would be found guilty, the press fitted the defendant for [[martyr]]dom and created an onslaught of ridicule, and hosts of cartoonists added their own portrayals to the attack. ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine's initial coverage of the trial focused on Dayton as "the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war". ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine adorned its masthead with monkeys reading books and proclaimed "the whole matter is something to laugh about."<ref>E.S. Martin, ''Life'' 86 (July 16, 1925): p. 16.</ref> Both ''[[Literary Digest]]'' and the popular humor magazine ''Life'' (1890–1930) ran compilations of jokes and humorous observations garnered from newspapers around the country.<ref>"Life Lines", ''Life'' 85 (June 18, 1925): 10; 85 (June 25, 1925): 6, 86 (July 2, 1925): 8; 86 (July 9, 1925): 6; 86 (July 30, 1925): 6; "Life's Encyclopedia", ''Life'' 85 (July 25, 1925): 23; Kile Croak, "My School in Tennessee", ''Life'' 86 (July 2, 1925); 4; Arthur Guiterman, "Notes for a Tennessee Primer", ''Life'' 86 (July 16, 1925): 5; "Topics in Brief", ''Literary Digest'', for 86 (July 4, 1925): 18; 86 (July 11, 1925): 15; 86 (July 18, 1925): 15; 86 (July 25, 1925): 15, 86 (August 1, 1925): 17; 86 (August 8, 1925): 13.</ref> [[American Experience]]'' has published a gallery of such cartoons written about the trial,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/monkeytrial/gallery/index.html |title=Gallery: Monkey Trial|publisher=PBS|website=American Experience}} A gallery of cartoons produced in reaction to the trial, from PBS' ''[[American Experience]]''.</ref> and 14 such cartoons are also reprinted in [[L. Sprague de Camp]]'s ''[[The Great Monkey Trial]]''.

Overwhelmingly, the butt of these jokes was the prosecution and those aligned with it: Bryan, the city of Dayton, the state of Tennessee, and the entire South, as well as fundamentalist Christians and anti-evolutionists. Rare exceptions were found in the Southern press, where the fact that Darrow had saved [[Leopold and Loeb]] from the death penalty continued to be a source of ugly humor. The most widespread form of this ridicule was directed at the inhabitants of Tennessee.<ref>"Tennessee Goes Fundamentalist", ''New Republic'' 42 (April 29, 1925): pp. 258–60; Howard K. Hollister, "In Dayton, Tennessee", ''Nation'' 121 (July 8, 1925): pp. 61–62; Dixon Merritt, "Smoldering Fires", ''Outlook'' 140 (July 22, 1925): pp. 421–22.</ref> ''Life'' described Tennessee as "not up to date in its attitude to such things as evolution".<ref>Martin, ''Life'' 86 (July 16, 1925): p. 16.</ref> Attacks on Bryan were also frequent and acidic. ''Life'' awarded him its "Brass Medal of the Fourth Class" for having "successfully demonstrated by the alchemy of ignorance hot air may be transmuted into gold, and that the Bible is infallibly inspired except where it differs with him on the question of wine, women, and wealth".<ref>''Life'' 86 (July 9, 1925): p. 7.</ref> ''Time'' magazine related Bryan's arrival in town with the disparaging comment "The populace, Bryan's to a moron, yowled a welcome."<ref>"The Great Trial", ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]''{{nbsp}}6 (July 20, 1926): p. 17.</ref>