---
title: World War II rumor clinics and rumor control (1940 to 1947)
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/
description: from March 1942 a Boston newspaper column, run with Harvard psychologists, printed one wartime rumor each Sunday beside the "FACT", and dozens of papers…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a Second World War naval-intelligence collage of a Pacific theatre map, aerial reconnaissance photographs and radar plots.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwii-pacific.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# World War II rumor clinics and rumor control (1940 to 1947)

At a glance

From March 1942 a Boston newspaper column, run with Harvard psychologists, printed one wartime rumor each Sunday beside the "FACT", and dozens of papers copied it…

- **When:** March 1, 1942
- **Actor:** Boston Herald and the Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety's Division of Propaganda Research…
- **Target:** Wartime rumors circulating among the home-front public, including rumors that set groups of…
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/)
- **Regime:** [Roosevelt administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roosevelt-administration/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Boston Herald and the Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety's Division of Propaganda Research (Gordon Allport, Robert Knapp); dozens of U.S. newspapers; the U.S. Office of War Information; for comparison, the British Ministry of Information
- **Target:** Wartime rumors circulating among the home-front public, including rumors that set groups of Americans against each other

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#what-happened)
- [How it worked](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#how-it-worked)
- [Measured effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#measured-effect)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#same-method-test)
- [What the record shows and doesn't](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#what-the-record-shows-and-doesn-t)
- [See also](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#see-also)
- [See also in Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#see-also-in-learn)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwii-rumor-clinics/#sources)

On this page

**In one line:** from March 1942 a Boston newspaper column, run with Harvard psychologists, printed one wartime rumor each Sunday beside the "FACT", and dozens of papers copied it; the Office of War Information objected that printing rumors spread them, no study measured whether the columns worked, and the effort left the first social-science classification of wartime rumor.

*Content note: this page describes wartime rumors aimed at racial, ethnic and religious groups, as they were recorded at the time.*

## What happened

- **September 1939 onward (Britain).** Germany begins English-language broadcasts to Britain, later associated with "Lord Haw-Haw". The Ministry of Information's Anti-Lies Bureau is set up, probably at about the same time; the historian Jo Fox notes that the National Archives files do not show exactly when.
- **July 1940 (Britain).** After the fall of France, the Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, launches the "Silent Column" in a broadcast asking listeners to "Join with me the ranks of the Silent Column". Advertisements, one in the *Manchester Guardian* on 13 July, told people to "Avoid Rumour". About ten days after launch, Winston Churchill tells Parliament the campaign has passed into "innocuous desuetude" and the phrase will no longer be used. The House of Lords debates it on 1 August.
- **1 March 1942.** The Boston Herald Rumor Clinic starts, with Gordon Allport and Robert Knapp of Harvard. Knapp runs the Division of Propaganda Research of the Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety. Some accounts credit the Boston journalist Frances Sweeney, editor of the *Boston City Reporter* and a campaigner against antisemitism, with starting it.
- **13 June 1942.** President Roosevelt creates the Office of War Information (OWI) by executive order, with the broadcaster Elmer Davis as director.
- **1942 to 1943.** The OWI runs a World War II Rumor Project: field staff of federal agencies in 42 states recruit local correspondents who send in rumor reports, forwarded to Dr. Eugene Horowitz at the OWI's Bureau of Public Inquiries. The files are now at the Library of Congress.
- **24 January 1943.** A *New York Times* feature says as many as 40 newspapers are running their own rumor-clinic columns. Clinics are reported in cities from San Francisco to Montreal.
- **1943.** The OWI, in a *New York Times* story, condemns the clinics, saying the attempt to spike rumors spreads them. Clinics close over the following period; accounts differ on the timing.
- **1943.** The sociologist Howard W. Odum publishes *Race and Rumors of Race*, built on thousands of student reports of rumors in the South.
- **1944 to 1947.** Knapp publishes "A Psychology of Rumor" (*Public Opinion Quarterly*, spring 1944). Allport and Leo Postman publish "An Analysis of Rumor" (1946) and the book *The Psychology of Rumor* (Henry Holt, 1947).

## How it worked

**The Boston model.** It had three parts: the newspaper; the Division of Propaganda Research; and a listening network of about 300 "morale wardens" (bartenders, waitresses, union representatives and insurance salesmen) who reported what they heard. Each Sunday the column printed a rumor in italics, then the word FACT and a rebuttal from an official or local expert. Readers sent hundreds of letters, and the clinic gathered information on more than a thousand rumors.

**What it printed.** Examples recorded by the New England Historical Society include rumors that Indian soldiers at Fort Devens were raping women, that no U.S. Navy vessel survived Pearl Harbor, and that a woman's head exploded after she had a perm and went to work in a shell factory. One entry read: "Soldiers are being charged exorbitant prices in Army canteens for cigarettes and beer, etc." The FACT, from Army Public Relations: "False! Post exchanges are operated to the benefit of the soldiers."

**Knapp's classification.** Knapp sorted the Boston rumors by the emotion they expressed:

| Type | What it expresses | Share in Knapp's sample |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Wedge-driving | Hostility that splits groups (for example, that American Catholics were avoiding the draft, or that German-, Italian- or Japanese-Americans were disloyal) | 66% |
| Bogie (fear) | Feared outcomes | 25% |
| Pipe-dream (wish) | Hoped-for outcomes (for example, that Japan's oil was running low so the war would end soon) | 2% |
| Unclassifiable |  | 7% |

The wedge-driving rumors blamed bounded groups of Americans for the war's hardships. That fits the pattern this archive calls [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/). The OWI's own reporting, as described by *Smithsonian* magazine, found that most rumors it tracked were race-based stories spread by Americans, not the work of German agents. The best-documented example is the "Eleanor Clubs" rumor, which spread among white Southerners in 1942. It said that Black cooks and laundresses, inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, were organizing to raise their pay or leave domestic work, and had vowed to put "a white woman in every kitchen by Christmas". Officials, including Mrs. Roosevelt, asked the FBI to investigate. Neither the FBI nor local sheriffs found that any such club existed.

**The federal approach.** *Smithsonian* reports that the Roosevelt administration was not pleased by independent clinics, since the OWI was meant to coordinate war information and had its own rumor-control work. The OWI shifted toward giving out facts without repeating the rumor, and toward material presenting all Americans as fighting together, rather than rebutting racist rumors one by one. The same government also ran "careless talk" posters built on fear of loose talk ([Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)), shown below. Those posters are a separate security campaign, not the clinics' output.

**The British model.** The Anti-Lies Bureau logged rumors reported by the public and at first answered each informant with a personal letter refuting the rumor and giving other information. It dropped the letters because of the volume. Alongside the Silent Column publicity, the government prosecuted people under Defence Regulation 39BA for statements "calculated to cause alarm and despondency". In a Commons answer in October 1940, the Home Office said the Director of Public Prosecutions had authorized proceedings in 47 cases since 24 July. Thirty people were convicted, six bound over and one discharged under the Probation of Offenders Act.

![Poster: two men in armchairs read newspapers and talk under a portrait in which Hitler's face looks out from the frame; the text reads "... strictly between these four walls!" and "Careless talk costs lives"](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/wwii-rumor-clinics-fougasse-four-walls.jpg)

*"... strictly between these four walls!", Fougasse (Cyril Kenneth Bird), British Ministry of Information "Careless talk costs lives" poster, 1939 to 1945 (issued from 1940). The campaign ran beside the Silent Column and the prosecutions, as a poster appeal, not as a rumor-refutation service. Library of Congress copy (POS - Gr Brit .B57, no. 18), shown with the scan's colour and grey-scale targets. Crown copyright of a wartime Ministry of Information poster, expired more than 50 years ago; LOC: no known restrictions on publication.*

## Measured effect

- **No outcome study exists.** Histories report that the organizers found it hard to measure whether the columns reduced rumor, and argued only that readers became more "rumor conscious". No survey comparing readers and non-readers, and no before-and-after count of any rumor, was found for this page.
- **The backfire worry was stated, not tested.** The OWI's 1943 objection, that printing a rumor spreads it, was a judgment, not a measured result. Modern research on repetition and belief takes up the same question (see [Fact-checking and corrections](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fact-checking/)).
- **What was measured was rumor itself.** Knapp's percentages describe what readers and wardens reported, not what the public believed. Allport and Postman's lasting output was a "basic law" (the amount of rumor varies with the importance of a subject times the ambiguity of the evidence) and lab studies in which one person described a picture to the next, and so on. About 70% of the details were lost in the first five or six retellings. They called the changes leveling (details dropped), sharpening (some details kept and stressed) and assimilation (details bent to fit what people expected).
- **Critiques of the lab work.** Later researchers argued that a lab chain is unlike real rumor and questioned whether rumors necessarily grow less accurate. Tamotsu Shibutani's *Improvised News* (1966) treated rumor as a routine collective effort to make sense of ambiguous situations, not a deviant act. A 1980 *Psychological Bulletin* review was titled "Psychology of rumor reconsidered". A later paper in *Law and Human Behavior* reported that the Allport and Postman study had been distorted in the eyewitness-testimony literature that cited it.
- **Britain.** In the Lords debate of 1 August 1940 it was said that the Silent Column had not had the desired effect. No measurement is on record.

## Positions on the record

- **The clinics' organizers.** Allport, Knapp and colleagues presented rumor control as public education: expose the rumor and explain why it spreads.
- **The OWI.** It said the clinics spread the rumors they printed and moved to a facts-first approach. Allport and Postman wrote that federal and civilian leaders quickly saw rumor as harmful to morale, and that the OWI and other federal agencies ran the prevention campaign.
- **British press and Parliament.** *The Spectator* welcomed the end of the Silent Column and called the campaign questionable, and it criticized Duff Cooper both for the campaign and for an earlier threat of tighter press censorship. In July 1940 popular newspapers called the ministry's staff "Cooper's Snoopers" over its opinion polling, and critics accused it of "Gestapo" tactics.
- **The targeted groups.** No statement by a Catholic, German-American, Italian-American, Japanese-American or Black organization about the clinics' printing of rumors about them was verified for this page.

## Same-method test

A foreign government today that recruited hundreds of listeners to report talk in bars and shops, printed rumors with official rebuttals, and prosecuted people for spreading "alarm and despondency" would be recorded here as monitoring of speech plus a rebuttal service, with its stated security reason beside it. The U.S. and British wartime programs are recorded the same way. There are differences. The Boston clinic was run by a newspaper and a state committee, not by federal agencies. The sources describe wardens reporting rumors; none reviewed here describes files kept on named speakers. The federal information agency itself told the clinics to stop. In Britain, criticism in Parliament and the press ended the Silent Column within about ten days, while prosecutions under Regulation 39BA went through the courts. Modern state rebuttal services are compared in [Government fact-check units: Russia, China, India and Ukraine](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/government-fact-check-units/), and laws against false statements in [Laws against "fake news": Germany, France and Malaysia under one standard](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/fake-news-laws/).

## What the record shows and doesn't

- **Documented:** the Boston clinic's start, structure and format; its spread; Knapp's classification; the OWI's Rumor Project and 1943 objection; the Silent Column's launch and withdrawal; the 1940 prosecution figures.
- **Not shown:** that any clinic reduced the spread or belief of any rumor, or that any clinic increased it. The debate over repetition was argued in 1943, not tested.
- **Contested:** who founded the Boston clinic (Allport and Knapp, or Sweeney), and when the clinics closed.
- **Frames, not findings:** "the first fact-checkers" and "a wartime speech-policing network" are both readings laid over a record of newspapers, psychologists and officials disagreeing about whether naming a rumor helps or hurts.

![Loose Lips Might Sink Ships (1942)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/loose-lips-might-sink-ships.jpg) *"Loose Lips Might Sink Ships", U.S. government home-front security poster, c. 1942. U.S. National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain (U.S. government work). A security campaign run alongside the rumor clinics, not their output.*

![Wanted! For Murder: Her Careless Talk Costs Lives (1942)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/wanted-for-murder-careless-talk.jpg) *"Wanted! For Murder: Her Careless Talk Costs Lives", U.S. government poster, 1942, photograph by Victor Keppler. U.S. National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain (U.S. government work).*

![Poster: sailors in a lifeboat, two of them wounded, row away from a burning ship; the words read "A careless word ... a needless sinking"](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/wwii-rumor-clinics-careless-word-needless-sinking.jpg)

*"A careless word ... a needless sinking", OWI Poster No. 24, Anton Otto Fischer, U.S. Office of War Information / Government Printing Office, dated 1941 to 1945 on Commons. U.S. National Archives (record 513601), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain (U.S. government work). Like the two posters above, a careless-talk appeal, not a rumor-clinic item.*

## See also

- [The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1937-1942)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/institute-for-propaganda-analysis/): the prewar civic-education effort that taught the public to spot propaganda devices.
- [Fact-checking and corrections](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fact-checking/) and [Inoculation and prebunking](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/inoculation-and-prebunking/): the modern research on rebuttal, repetition and warning people in advance.
- [Government fact-check units: Russia, China, India and Ukraine](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/government-fact-check-units/), [Laws against "fake news": Germany, France and Malaysia under one standard](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/fake-news-laws/), [The debate over counter-disinformation](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/).
- [Countering propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/countering/): the index of this section.

## See also in Learn

- [Illusory truth effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/illusory-truth-effect/)
- [Continued influence effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/continued-influence-effect/)
- [Out-group homogeneity](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/out-group-homogeneity/)

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Loose Lips Might Sink Ships (c. 1942) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Loose_lips_might_sink_ships%22_-_NARA_-_513543.jpg), from NARA; provenance in examples/entries | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| Wanted! For Murder: Her Careless Talk Costs Lives (1942) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22WANTED_FOR_MURDER_-_HER_CARELESS_TALK_COSTS_LIVES%22_-_NARA_-_513599.jpg), from NARA; provenance in examples/entries | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| "... strictly between these four walls!" (Fougasse, British Ministry of Information, 1940) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2004675142/) | Crown copyright, expired (wartime UK government poster; LOC: no known restrictions on publication) |
| "A careless word ... a needless sinking" (OWI Poster No. 24, Anton Otto Fischer) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_careless_word_-_A_needless_sinking_-_NARA_-_513601.jpg), from NARA record 513601 | Public domain (U.S. government work) |

### Image gaps

- **A Boston Herald "Rumor Clinic" column.** The 1942 columns may be public domain if copyright was not renewed, but no scan on Wikimedia Commons was checked. **This gap may be fillable.**
- **OWI Rumor Project documents.** The Library of Congress has digitized them; the library's site could not be reached from the build environment. **This gap can be filled.**
- **A British Silent Column advertisement.** Not found; a Ministry of Information careless-talk poster (Fougasse) is shown instead, which is a different campaign. **This gap may be fillable.**
- **Portraits of Allport, Knapp or Postman.** No openly licensed portrait was checked.

## Sources

- [New England Historical Society, The Boston Herald Rumor Clinic of World War II](https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-boston-herald-rumor-clinic-of-world-war-ii/)
- [Atlas Obscura, During WWII, "Rumor Clinics" were set up to dispel morale-damaging gossip](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wwii-rumor-clinics)
- [Smithsonian magazine, World War II "Rumor Clinics" helped America battle wild gossip](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/world-war-ii-rumor-clinics-helped-america-battle-wild-gossip-180983883/)
- [Mental Floss, How "Rumor Clinics" fought fake news 80 years ago](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/626984/-rumor-clinics-fake-news-world-war-ii)
- [Harvard Crimson, Faculty Members Edit Rumor Clinic (13 March 1942)](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1942/3/13/faculty-members-edit-rumor-clinic-pedited/?print=1)
- [Wikipedia, Frances Sweeney](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Sweeney) (used for orientation)
- [Knapp, A Psychology of Rumor, Public Opinion Quarterly 8(1), 1944](https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/8/1/22/1914214)
- [Wikipedia, Rumor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumor) (for Knapp's percentages; used for orientation)
- [Allport and Postman, An Analysis of Rumor, Public Opinion Quarterly 10(4), 1946](https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/10/4/501/1861351)
- [Allport and Postman, The Basic Psychology of Rumor (1945, PDF)](https://www.romolocapuano.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/AllportPostmanThe-BasicRumorOfPsychology.pdf)
- [Review of Allport and Postman, The Psychology of Rumor (Henry Holt, 1947), Annals of the American Academy](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000271624825700169)
- [Faye, Governing the grapevine: the study of rumor during World War II, History of Psychology (2007)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17575811/)
- [Cathy Faye, Loose Lips: the psychology of rumor during crisis, Behavioral Scientist](https://behavioralscientist.org/loose-lips-the-psychology-of-rumor-during-crisis-coronavirus/)
- [Library of Congress, World War II Rumor Project: about this collection](https://www.loc.gov/collections/world-war-ii-rumor-project/about-this-collection/) and [finding aid](https://findingaids.loc.gov/db/search/xq/searchMfer02.xq?_id=loc.afc.eadafc.af010004&_faSection=usingThisCollection&_faSubsection=usingThisCollection&_dmdid=d73e10)
- [Library of Congress Folklife Today, New collection online: World War II Rumor Project (2021)](https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2021/06/new-collection-online-world-war-ii-rumor-project/)
- [Wikipedia, Elmer Davis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Davis) (used for orientation)
- [South Carolina Encyclopedia, Eleanor Clubs](https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/eleanor-clubs/)
- [University of North Carolina Press, Odum, Race and Rumors of Race](https://uncpress.org/book/9780807897423/race-and-rumors-of-race/)
- [Shibutani, Improvised News (1966), review in Social Forces](https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/46/2/298/2228773)
- [Psychology of rumor reconsidered, Psychological Bulletin (1980)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232464367_Psychology_of_rumor_reconsidered)
- [Cite unseen: distortions of the Allport and Postman rumor study in the eyewitness testimony literature, Law and Human Behavior](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01044836)
- [The Spectator, "The Silent Column" (26 July 1940)](http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/26th-july-1940/3/the-silent-column) and [The relegation of the Silent Column campaign to "desuetude"](http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/26th-july-1940/6/the-relegation-of-the-silent-column-campaign-to-de)
- [Hansard, House of Lords, "The Silent Column" (1 August 1940)](https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1940-08-01/debates/1ce28d9d-8087-49e8-8b4c-00346d91ac03/TheSilentColumn)
- [Hansard, House of Commons, Defence Regulations (Sentences) (24 July 1940)](https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1940-07-24/debates/683488b8-be6c-4a27-86ac-9ce097d77a4a/DefenceRegulations(Sentences))
- [Hansard, House of Commons, Civil Defence (23 October 1940)](https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1940-10-23/debates/6d3f5c53-3d69-4132-9a43-2f112b7ba20b/CivilDefence) (prosecution figures under Regulation 39BA)
- [The National Archives, WWII government posters, source 6](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/government-posters/source-6/)
- [Wikipedia, Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Information_(United_Kingdom)) (used for orientation)
- [Jo Fox, Confronting Lord Haw-Haw: Rumor and Britain's Wartime Anti-Lies Bureau, Journal of Modern History 91(1), 2019](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/701579) and [author's final version](https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6919/)
- [Jo Fox, Careless Talk: Tensions within British Domestic Propaganda during the Second World War, Journal of British Studies 51(4), 2012](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/abs/careless-talk-tensions-within-british-domestic-propaganda-during-the-second-world-war/160B696932F043E5C609CF2F13C31537)