A little over two miles from the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Massachusetts—the site of the 115th Annual Eastern Communication Association Convention—the Washington Elm stood for decades until it fell to the dismay of Bostonians and, in a larger sense, the nation. This was a famous tree—purportedly the one under which General George Washington first assembled his troops on July 3, 1775. But it could also be considered an infamous tree, as historians began to poke holes in its patriotic, historic legend, noting either a dearth of evidence for the tree’s fabled role or even evidence that directly contradicts its story. In response to these attacks on the legendary story of the Washington Elm, people rose to defend it—both the tree itself and its story, fake or not. This paper offers a rhetorical analysis of how people rose to the defense of a fake story, offering historical insight into a currently relevant issue: when the falseness of a story is admitted but still preferred to the truth.

Compton, J. (2024). Image repair of fake news: The Washington Elm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rhetoric and Public Address Interest Group of Eastern Communication Association, Cambridge, MA.