Hollister Riot - Media Coverage

Media Coverage

The small riot came to national prominence through media coverage of the event. However, the articles that were written about the riot were greatly exaggerated and sensationalized the actual events.

Firstly, shortly after the Fourth of July weekend, two articles were published in the San Francisco Chronicle. With titles "Havoc in Hollister" and "Hollister's Bad Time", they both described the event as "pandemonium" and "terrorism". While the articles did not actually lie about the events that occurred, the perspectives of the articles were both negative toward the motorcyclists involved. The Chronicle article did little to cause panic for citizens in the California area as there was other major news occurring at the same time, including local labor strikes. Yet, the press reports of the Hollister riot did expand past California with an article published in the July 21, 1947 issue of Life Magazine. Life Magazine was a major American publication and this brought the riot to national prominence. The article was published in the section of Life that relied heavily on graphic images and sparse explanatory text. This was shown as the article included only a nearly full-page photo, a small 115-word insert of text at the bottom of the page and the headline, "Cyclist's Holiday: He and Friends Terrorize Town."

The large photo, taken by Barney Peterson of the San Francisco Chronicle, shows a drunken man, sitting atop a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, holding a beer bottle in each hand and surrounded by many other empty, broken bottles. The man was later identified as Eddie Davenport, a member of the Tulare Riders motorcycle club.

However, the reliability of the striking photo has been debated, as many sources say that it was staged. The photograph was taken by Barney Petersen of the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle did not run any images of the event. Many eyewitnesses argue that the image was staged. For example, Gus Deserpa is the man that can be seen in the background of the photograph. When he was interviewed after the Hollister riot, he said, "I saw two guys scraping all these bottles together, that had been lying in the street. Then they positioned a motorcycle in the middle of the pile. After a while this drunk guy comes staggering out of the bar, and they got him to sit on the motorcycle, and started to take his picture."

Barney Peterson's colleague at the Chronicle, photographer Jerry Telfer, said it was implausible that Peterson would have faked the photos. Telfer said, "Barney was not the type to fake a picture. Barney was the kind of fellow who had a very keen sense of ethics, pictorial ethics as well as word ethics."