The Forgotten Man Who Transformed Journalism in America

Lowell Thomas was the first host of a TV broadcast news program, and adopted a number of other new
technologies to make his mark in the 20th century
By the time Lowell Thomas turned 25, he’d already worked as a journalist, earned multiple degrees, and
found a place on the faculty at Princeton University. But seizing a rare opportunity during World War I
changed him from youthful overachiever to media heavyweight. During that conflict he met T.E. Lawrence,
soon-to-be famous as “Lawrence of Arabia”—and Thomas played a large part in giving Lawrence that fame.
The encounter launched Thomas into the media stratosphere with a groundbreaking multimedia
presentation that captivated millions.
But while Lawrence’s work ended abruptly with his untimely death, Thomas went on to live a long,
remarkable life. He traveled Europe, the Middle East, India, Afghanistan, New Guinea and Tibet, even meeting
the Dalai Lama. He made fans out of Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill and led a prolific career in the
news, making reports by print, radio, and TV—and reshaping them all into more formal, serious mediums.
Yet for a man with such a hyperbolic life, his legacy has been largely forgotten. Mitchell Stephens, a professor
of journalism at New York University, set out to remedy that lapse in public memory with his new
biography, The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th-Century Journalism.
Smithsonian.com talked with Stephens about his book, and why Thomas still matters today.
Sensationalism was a major part of journalism in the early 20th century, but Thomas helped reshape this.
How did he manage that?
The early 20th century was a time when a lot of people “improved” stories. It was a less fact-obsessed world
than the one we live in and therefore a less accurate world. Lowell was a pretty sensational journalist in
Chicago himself. Lowell got caught making something up in Chicago, but he learned a lesson.
When he got his great gig, hosting what at the time was a network radio newscast, he was aware of the
responsibilities that went with it. He helped pioneer a more sober style of journalism. Lowell quickly realized
that there were people among his hundreds of thousands and then millions of listeners who would write
letters and complain to his network if he got things wrong. Because [the radio broadcast] had so many
listeners and he was such a dominant figure, what happened there also spread to other iterations of radio,
then TV, then newspapers. Lowell contributed to the fact obsession that journalists have today.
The other aspect [that Thomas helped change] was non-partisanship. Journalism in the United States has
historically been an extremely partisan enterprise. Horace Greeley, the great 19th-century newspaper editor,
was one of the founders of the Republican Party. Lowell Thomas, who was a Republican, realized he couldn’t
make his newscast a Republican newscast because he would lose too many listeners. He wanted to be
listened to by Republicans and Democrats and this became the way broadcast news was done in the U.S.
Thomas is maybe best known for making T.E. Lawrence famous, but he also doesn’t seem to have
understood him.
Lawrence was a man with a very tangled inner life, probably gay at a time when you weren’t allowed to be.
He had a really complicated attitude towards fame. In one sense he pursued it, in one sense he hid from it.
Lowell was the opposite. Lowell lived very comfortably on the surface, was very comfortable with himself,
with the fame he eventually achieved. So they were an odd combination. Lawrence was disturbed by this
crass American fame that this journalist was bestowing on him, fame to the point that people were chasing
him down the streets. Lawrence was one of the first media-made stars. That was very difficult for a man of
his complications and his difficulties, his fissures and fractures.
Something else that comes up with both World Wars is the thin line between journalism and propaganda.
How did Thomas navigate that line?
The line between journalism and propaganda was not well drawn early in the 20th century. Lowell sent
himself over to cover World War I shortly after the United States entered it because he was always the man
who wanted to be where the action was. He was there in part to publicize and build support for the war—
something that we would not want to find journalists doing today. He had the support of the United States
government, and when he went to cover events in the Middle East he had the support of the British
government. Journalists today do have to work with military and government officials, but he didn’t
distinguish between supporting the war and covering it. He was a patriot and didn’t hide that.
In some ways that was important during World War II when—by my calculation—maybe one of every five
adults in the U.S. were getting news from this one man. It was a reassuring voice in a very scary time, when
a lot of Americans were dying overseas.
Another element of his success is his willingness to adapt to new technologies.
The most important medium for his career was a then-new media, radio. People in America were just buying
their first radio sets when Lowell’s voice was heard on them.
We think of this as an age of new technology, of journalists on Twitter, using Reddit and Snapchat and
Instagram and so on, but in some ways Lowell was more advanced in his use of technology 100 years ago
than any of them. He was early to use a typewriter, he was early on radio, he was one of the first to combine
voice with film before sound film had really caught on. And then when sound film did catch up, he was host
of the dominant newsreels that were shown in movie theaters twice a week when most Americans would go
to movie theaters every week.
He was early up in airplanes. He was the first to take real documentary footage of war. He was early in getting
into automobiles, though he was a terrible driver. And then in the start of the 1940s, when television had
just been invented and NBC was doing its first experiments in television, who did they get to host what was
definitely the first regular TV newscast and probably also the first regular television program of any sort?
Lowell Thomas.
His wife Fran traveled with him for much of his work and tried to write her own books, but never succeeded.
What was their relationship like?
Like most women at the time, she suffered from the various extant forms of sexism. She was a very bright
woman, an educated woman, and there wasn’t much for her to do with that. She went into the career that
many bright women went into and became a schoolteacher, but she got swept away on Lowell’s magic carpet.
She found himself with him in London, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand. She had quite an
exciting life surrounded by famous people, but she didn’t really get to use her talents. She made some effort
[to write] and Lowell did try to help her but she was unsuccessful.
What can we learn from Lowell Thomas’s story today?
We miss a voice that is known and trusted by such a large percentage of Americans. Lowell was the first of
those voices. Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, and later Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings
followed him in that role. There is no one that has that status today. There’s no one trusted by as many
people, on both sides of the political spectrum. There’s no one who’s nearly as well known as Lowell Thomas.
He was one of the most famous men in America. That’s not true of Anderson Cooper; it’s not true of Lester
Holt. And there’s nobody that can’t be dismissed by one side or the other as a partisan.
Some of this is good. We get a lot more voices in the news. Lowell Thomas was a white male from a very
traditional American background. Now there are a lot of points of view available. That’s mostly a good thing,
but we miss this trusted and extremely well known, expected voice.

The History of American Impeachment

There’s a precedent that it’s not just for presidents
In April 1970, Congressman Gerald Ford provided a blunt answer to an old question: “What is an impeachable
offense?”
Ford, then the House minority leader, declared, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House
of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” At the time, he was leading the charge
to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, a staunch liberal he accused of financial impropriety.
Ford’s memorable definition may not be textbook, but it certainly sums up the spirit of American
impeachments—judicial and otherwise. But what does the Constitution itself say about impeachment?
As the Constitution’s framers sweated and fretted through the Philadelphia summer 230 years ago, the
question of impeachment worried Benjamin Franklin. America’s elder statesman feared that without a means
to remove a corrupt or incompetent official, the only resort would be assassination. As Franklin put it, this
result would leave the political official “not only deprived of his life but of the opportunity of vindicating his
character.” Perhaps he had Julius Caesar and the Roman Senate in mind.
Ultimately, the framers agreed with Franklin. Drawn from British parliamentary precedent, impeachment
under the Constitution would be the legislature’s ultimate check on executive and judicial authority. As the
legislative branch, Congress was granted the power to remove the president, vice president, “and all civil
officers of the United States” from office upon impeachment and conviction.
There was some debate about which crimes would be impeachable, but the framers left us with “Treason,
Bribery or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Though the first two are pretty clear-cut, the rest of the
definition leaves considerably more wiggle room. But the Constitution offers much more clarity on the
process itself.
There is, first, an important difference between impeachment and conviction. It is the basic distinction
between an indictment—being formally charged with a crime—and being found guilty of that crime.
The process begins in the House of Representatives, which has the sole power to impeach. In modern times,
impeachment proceedings begin in the House Judiciary Committee, which investigates and holds hearings
on the charges. The committee may produce an impeachment resolution that usually contains articles of
impeachment based on specific charges. The House then votes on the resolution and articles, and can
impeach by a simple majority.
Then comes the trial. Under the Constitution, the Senate has the sole power to hear the case, with House
members acting as prosecutors. Attorneys for the accused can present a defense and question witnesses.
The accused may even testify. If the president or vice president has been impeached, the Chief Justice of the
United States presides over the trial. In other cases, the vice president or the president pro tempore of the
Senate is the presiding officer.
At the end of the hearing, the Senate debates the case in closed session, with each senator limited to 15
minutes of debate. Each article of impeachment is voted on separately and conviction requires a two-thirds
majority—67 of the 100 senators.
To date, the Senate has conducted formal impeachment proceedings 19 times, resulting in seven acquittals,
eight convictions, three dismissals, and one resignation with no further action.
Gerald Ford knew how high that bar was set. In 1970, he failed in his attempt to impeach Douglas. The FDR-
appointed liberal justice had already survived an earlier impeachment attempt over his brief stay of execution
for convicted spy Ethel Rosenberg. This time, the supposed offense was financial impropriety, but Ford and
others also clearly balked at Douglas’s liberal views. The majority of the House disagreed, and Douglas stayed
on the bench.
So far, only two American presidents have been impeached and tried in the Senate: Andrew Johnson—
Lincoln’s successor—and Bill Clinton. Both were acquitted. Richard Nixon would certainly have been
impeached had he not resigned his office in August 1974.
Of the other impeachment cases since 1789, one was of a senator—William Blount of Tennessee, case
dismissed in 1799—and one a cabinet officer, Secretary of War William Belknap, who was acquitted in 1876.
Most of the other impeachment cases have involved federal judges, eight of whom have been convicted.
Among those impeached judges was Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. In 1805, the Senate acquitted
Chase after a trial notorious for its partisan politics. Vice President Aaron Burr, who presided over the Senate
proceedings, was praised for his evenhanded conduct during the trial. Of course, Burr had recently killed
former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He returned to Washington to oversee the
Chase trial while himself indicted for murder in New York and New Jersey. Never arrested or tried in
Hamilton’s death, Burr escaped impeachment when his term expired.
After Nixon’s close encounter with impeachment in the summer of 1974, Gerald Ford secured another spot
in the history books as the first man to become Commander in Chief without having been elected president
or vice president. He set another precedent with the pardon of his disgraced predecessor. Ford’s bare-
knuckles dictum about the politics of impeachment still reflects the reality of Washington.
Kenneth C. Davis is the author of Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much About the American
Presidents and, most recently, In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and
Five Black Lives. His website is www.dontknowmuch.com.

FUTURE OF CONSERVATION: Cave Dragons Exist—And Saving Them Could Be Key to Protecting
Drinking Water
New DNA techniques are letting researchers track down the largest, strangest cave animals in the world
In 2015, Gregor Aljančič almost died chasing cave dragons.
The head of the Tular Cave Laboratory, run by Slovenia's Society of Cave Biology, was diving in the
underground passages of Planina Cave when he got trapped in a small air pocket. Nearly a mile underground,
his oxygen dwindling, he made his best guess on the direction to safety. By a stroke of luck he ended up in
another air pocket. Nearly four hours later, he found his colleagues—just before rescuers had arrived.
“The only reason he’s alive now is he found an air pocket in one of the crevasses and that kept him alive and
he slowly worked his way back,” says Stanley Sessions, a biology professor at Hartwick College in New York
state who has studied cave dragons with Aljančič in the Balkans. “It is just by the grace of proteus—the great
olm in the sky—that he is alive today.”
The blind cave dragon, as it is called, has long endeared biologists with its unparalleled weirdness. These
snake-like amphibians sport small limbs, antler-like gills set back from their long snouts and translucent,
pinkish-white skin that resembles human flesh. At up to 12 inches long, they are thought to be the world's
largest cave animal. They live up to 70 years, the entirety of which they spend deep underground in
the Dinaric Alps, which includes parts of Slovenia, Italy, Croatia and Herzegovina.
“I’m fascinated about their exceptional adaptation to the extreme environment of the caves,”
says Gergely Balázs, a cave biology PhD student at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest who explores
the caves where these dragons live. “And they are baby dragons, for God’s sake.”
Well, not exactly. In the past, on the odd occasion that flooding would wash one up to the surface, locals
believed the unusual amphibians to be baby dragons—hence the nickname. One of the creature’s other
monikers, proteus, stems from an early Greek sea god who had the ability to change shape. And while the
origins of the German name (olm) are uncertain, the Slovenian name (človeška ribica) translates roughly to
"human-fish."
You might think the obscure habitats of these legendary creatures would put them safely out of reach of
human destruction. But their watery ecosystems collect the runoff from whatever drains down from the
surface, meaning they still face habitat destruction due to development and hydroelectric projects which
drain and reroute underground water supplies. Today they face increasing threats of pollution from
agricultural runoff, not to mention the legacy of chemical waste plants.
“Karst is one of the most vulnerable landscapes on the planet,” Aljančič says, referring to the sinkhole- and
cave-riddled limestone landscapes beneath which cave dragons make their homes. Moreover, focusing more
effort on proteus conservation can also conserve water for Slovenians and for those in neighboring countries,
he adds. After all, the same water that trickles down to the olm world is the source of drinking water for 96
percent of Slovenians.
“If they pollute the water and kill these guys off, it will be the biggest catastrophe of all time,” says Sessions.
Moreover, proteus are just the top of a diverse underground food chain that could also be killed off by
pollution. “The caves in Slovenia are like tropical forests. They are biodiversity hotspots in terms of the
number of species,” says Sessions. “And the species are cave-adapted so they are very, very strange.”
To help save a dragon, you first have to find it. That's a tall order when your subject lives in a
vast underground maze of limestone passages. In an effort to simplify the search for dragons and increase
scientists’ abilities to detect them, Aljančič and his colleagues are now using new environmental DNA
sampling techniques, which pinpoint tiny traces of genetic material in water to figure out where the
creatures hide without the need for cave diving.
Olms’ underground isolation has protected them from some of the major threats to amphibians of the few
decades, such as human-influenced climate change and invasive fungal diseases. But now, it seems that the
problems of the world above have reached the world below. “We need to know more about proteus and its
habitat if we want to keep them both intact in future,” Aljančič. “New approaches in monitoring techniques
such as eDNA (will) not only reduce the need of risky caving or cave diving, but even increase the quality of
data collected in nature.”
Aljančič and his colleagues recently published one of the most extensive surveys of cave dragons to date, for
which they sampled water downstream from hidden cave systems to identify a number of new populations
in Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the first ones known in Montenegro. To do so, they used a refined
DNA technique that allows them to pinpoint proteus DNA strands mixed among a myriad of other genetic
material in water. The technique also allowed them to detect proteus with a rarer black color in southern
Slovenia, and to double the known range of this variety.
Despite the threats they face, proteus numbers can be vast. Sessions tells a story about biologists who were
exploring some of the back recesses of the massive Postojna Cave—a famous Slovenian tourist attraction—
when they came across an enormous underground cavern. “They found this big lake with echoing, dripping
water; the only thing that was missing was Gollum,” he says. The lake’s bottom was entirely white, but as
they approached, the color suddenly dispersed.
“It turned out that the bottom of the lake was completely carpeted with olms,” Sessions says. “This gives you
an idea of how many of these things are out there.”
Cave dragons sit atop a complex cave food chain, which includes cave shrimp, spiders, arthropods, wood lice-
type creatures and more. The predatory dragons will eat almost anything that fits in their mouth, but that
doesn’t mean they always have an appetite, due in part to a very low metabolism; Sessions says that some
researchers recently stumbled upon evidence that a captive individual had gone for a decade without eating.
Sessions, who was not involved in Aljančič’s recent study, says the new eDNA technique is a good way to
detect proteus. “This study is taking a really non-invasive, non-destructive approach just sampling
environmental water for fingerprint DNA,” he says. The technique is especially useful for finding proteus
genetic traces in water, Balázs adds. It can help in situations where murky water makes it difficult for divers
like him to see. “If you are just banging your head into rocks and you can’t find the way, it’s not fun,” he says.
“And you don’t see the animals either.”
“Science is all about the how and why,” Balázs continued in a follow-up email. “We need to know how strong
the population is. Are they healthy? Can we find juveniles? ... We have no information what they do in real
life, in nature. It’s really hard to observe.”
So will Aljančič and team’s advances in using environmental DNA to detect detection soon make cave diving
obsolete? Not likely, says Balázs, who was involved in a tagging study of the animals in 2015. After all, eDNA
is a useful and affordable tool, but it only gives biologists a rough idea of where there be dragons. Divers still
need to hunt them down.
To do so, Balázs has squeezed through nearly 50 cracks in the karst and underwater tunnels, chimneys and
caves in what he calls “a labyrinth of restriction” of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the better part of 15 years.
While cave diving purely for the sake of exploration can be difficult, he says, cave diving to search for
proteus is even harder since the snake-like creatures can take refuge in tiny, cracks in the rock difficult to
access by humans.
Yet matter how much we find out about them, it's likely that cave dragons will still fill us with mystery and
wonder. “They do nothing,” says Balázs. “They live in strange places, not moving for years.”