Talk:Keith Morrison
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On July 5, 1992, from 7PM to 8PM, Keith Morrison promoted a 500-year-old legend as though it were a recent development supported by current research.
This major journalistic scandal occurred on the NBC News special "Voyage of Mystery," which examined the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus and his crew. From the opening remarks to the closing comments, the dominant theme was that Columbus possessed a secret map.
Morrison told the viewers that this map was drawn around 1477 by the pilot of a Portuguese ship, which was swept across the Atlantic Ocean by a fierce storm. The storm carried the pilot to the West Indies and back to the Madeira Islands, where Columbus lived. Supposedly, Columbus acquired the map when the pilot died. In 1492 Columbus retraced the route on this map to reach the West Indies.
The program featured Luis Coin, who has formulated a theory that Columbus sailed along a more southerly route which was indicated in the secret map. According to Morrison, "after many years of research, Dr. Louis Coin, a Spanish professor and master mariner, is convinced that Columbus showed Isabella a map" (presumably the secret map). Viewers are led to believe that Coin's "16 years of painstaking research" support the existence of such a map.
The program followed Coin's southern route to the West Indies and closes with Morrison's remark, "Like us, he [Columbus] sailed in the wake of someone else." Viewers are to believe that the existence of the secret map is now a proven fact.
Except for one passing remark, Morrison fails to inform viewers about the origins of this 500-year-old legend of the secret map. This legend is discussed in many books, and some authors refer to it as "the story of the Unknown Pilot." The legend was concocted to discredit Columbus and to minimize the importance of his voyage.
The "Unknown Pilot" legend was first published in 1535 by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo. After relating various versions of the legend, Oviedo wrote, "As for me, I hold it to be false."
How can it be that now this legend is presented as an established fact by an NBC News journalist, when for 500 years no evidence has ever been produced?
In my opinion, Morrison discredited himself as a journalist. This program is based on a book, "Columbus: for Gold, Glory and God," written by the British writer John Dyson. NBC bought the program from Fox Television in London, England. Moreover, Keith Morrison did no journalistic research but simply read the script, which had been written by Dyson.
Many details about the origins of this yarn are on pages 61-62 of "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" by Samuel Eliot Morison. On page 62, Morison wrote: "Certain modern pundits, whose critical standards are so severe that they reject Columbus's sea journals as unauthentic, snap at this Tale of an Ancient Mariner and swallow it hook, line and sinker." This is a perfect descripion of Luis Coin, John Dyson, Keith Morrison and the NBC brass that perpetrated the dastardly "Voyage of Mystery" hoax.
