Suppression of the Watkins shark attack news

The suppression of the news of Christine Watkins's shark attack was a deliberate decision by Amity's power structure—led by Mayor Larry Vaughan and newspaper editor Harry Meadows—to conceal the lethal danger from the public in order to protect the town's economically vital summer tourist season, a choice that directly enabled the subsequent deaths of Alexander Kintner and Morris Cater and became the central moral crisis of the novel.

Background and Economic Stakes

Amity's winter population of about 1,000 swelled to nearly 10,000 in summer, and those nine thousand visitors kept the thousand permanent residents alive for the whole year. Merchants from the hardware store and the sporting goods store to the local pharmacist needed a boom summer to support them through the winter, during which they never broke even. Even after the best of summers, three of every ten families went on relief, and dozens of men were forced to move to the north shore of Long Island for the winter to shuck scallops for a few dollars a day. One bad summer would nearly double the relief rolls. The summer was already shaping up as mediocre: rentals were up from last year but were not "good" rentals, many were "groupers"—bands of ten or fifteen young people splitting the rent on a big house—and at least a dozen of the $7,000–$10,000-a-season shore-front houses had not yet been rented. Sensational reports of a shark attack, Brody knew, might turn mediocrity into disaster.

The Decision to Suppress

After recovering Christine Watkins's truncated corpse and confirming with coroner Carl Santos that the cause of death was "definitely and incontrovertibly shark attack," Police Chief Martin Brody wanted to close the beaches for a couple of days and publicize the attack to make people fear the water and stay away from it. He called Harry Meadows, the editor of the Amity Leader, for lunch. Meadows had already done extensive research, consulting Matt Hooper at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, who identified the likely killer as a great white shark—a "man-eater." Meadows argued that the odds of another attack were "almost nonexistent" and that running a story saying a young woman was bitten in two by a monster shark off Amity would mean "we can kiss the summer good-by." He told Brody, "I think this is one of those times, Martin, when we have to forget the book and think of what's best for the people." Brody countered that there was a chance Meadows was wrong and that if somebody else got hit by that fish, his own ass would be in a sling. Meadows then revealed that the decision had already been made: he had received six phone calls that morning—five from advertisers (one restaurant, one hotel, two real estate firms, and an ice cream shop) and the sixth from Mr. Coleman in New York, who owned fifty-five percent of the Leader and had received phone calls himself. Coleman told Meadows there would be no story in the Leader. Brody said he would close the beaches anyway and put up signs saying why. Meadows warned him that elected officials could be impeached.

Vaughan's Pressure and Brody's Capitulation

Ten minutes after Brody returned to his office, Mayor Larry Vaughan arrived. Vaughan was upset and demanded to know where Brody would get the authority to close the beaches. Brody admitted he was not sure he had it officially—the selectmen would have to declare a state of emergency—but unofficially he figured it was his responsibility to keep people safe. Vaughan said, "I don't want you to close the beaches," and argued that the Fourth of July was the make-or-break weekend and that closing the beaches would invite reporters to snoop around. When Brody refused, Vaughan produced a copy of the corporate charter of the town of Amity and showed Brody that the selectmen had the power to remove the chief of police. "If you won't do what's right," Vaughan said, "we'll put someone in your job who will." Brody sighed and said, "Shit. I don't like it. It doesn't smell good. But okay, if it's that important." Vaughan then visited the Footes to appeal to their "public-spiritedness," noting that Watkins was a nobody—a drifter with no family, no close friends—so "she won't be missed." Brody went home and told Ellen he was doing nothing, explaining that the powers-that-be were willing to take the chance that it was just a freak accident.

Consequences and Exposure

The suppression directly led to the deaths of six-year-old Alexander Kintner and sixty-five-year-old Morris Cater the following Sunday. After those attacks, the New York Times ran the story on page one, and the Amity Leader ran a banner headline: TWO KILLED BY MONSTER SHARK OFF AMITY BEACH, with a subhead revealing the number of victims had risen to three. The Leader reported that "it was understood, however, that Amity police and government officials had decided to withhold the information in the public interest," quoting an unnamed selectman who said, "People tend to overreact when they hear about a shark attack. We didn't want to start a panic. And we had an expert's opinion that the odds against another attack were astronomical." Mrs. Kintner stormed into Brody's office, slapped him across the face with the newspaper, and screamed, "You killed Alex!" Brody could only say, "Because we didn't think it could happen again." The cover-up also became the foundation of the Caskata Estates scandal, in which Vaughan, deeply in debt to Mafia figure Tino Russo, had been buying up depressed real estate and needed the beaches open to drive prices back up. Brody later told Quint that he felt the town could only be alive again if they killed the shark, and Quint, after Hooper's death, declared, "I am going to kill that fish. Come if you want. Stay home if you want. But I am going to kill that fish."