"…all action takes place… in a kind of twilight… which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are…"
"Whatever is hidden from full view in this feeble light… has to be guessed at by talent or simply left to chance."
Media bias in war reporting is amplified.
Commercial bias: Context is sacrificed for action (daily battles, car bombs).
Status quo bias: Elevated as patriotism; reporters avoid attacking leaders during national crises.
General William T. Sherman banned reporters from the front, viewing them as spies.
War Secretary Edwin Stanton's actions:
Implemented press passes and press releases.
Controlled telegraph lines.
Imposed news blackouts.
Hysterical rumors filled the void due to the news blackout.
Southern newspapers printed on wallpaper due to supply shortages.
Northern editors criticized each other and Lincoln's war strategy.
Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor, advocated extreme strategies.
Notable Civil War Journalism
Antietam (September 17, 1862): Bloodiest day in U.S. history.
George Smalley, Tribune reporter, attached himself to General Joe Hooker's staff.
His honest and courageous account was a paragon of war journalism.
Smalley's dispatch was sent directly to Lincoln, awaiting the news.
Lincoln fired McClellan after Smalley's report.
Post-Civil War Media Landscape
Emergence of the template for future war journalism: use/abuse of technology, press releases, censorship, passive reporting.
Reporting varied from clarity to being warped by ideals and patriotism.
Before the war, reporting was anonymous.
General Joe Hooker demanded reporters sign their work to hold them accountable.
The military contained the media using carrots, sticks, and patriotism.
Senator Hiram Johnson (1917) quote: "The first casualty, when war comes, is truth."
World War I Propaganda
Woodrow Wilson ran against war in 1916 but then sold it in 1917.
Espionage and Sedition Acts: Outlawed dissent.
Committee on Public Information (CPI):
Spread war fever.
Suppressed bad news.
Equated dissent with disloyalty.
Demonized the enemy.
Having a German last name became dangerous.
CPI chief George Creel: CPI material was "propagation of faith," not propaganda as defined by Germans.
World War I Reporting
France and Britain barred most reporters from the front.
George Seldes (United Press) accepted news reports as true, later regretting it.
Government prohibited photos of American dead.
Allied propaganda machine sustained morale and dragged America into the war.
∗ No evidence of the claim is ever found.
Reporters "more or less lied about the war."
Post-World War I and Censorship
Seldes interviewed German Commander Paul von Hindenburg after the war.
Pershing censored the interview and court-martialed Seldes for crossing into Germany.
Germans blamed their defeat on socialists, communists, and Jews (the "stab in the back").
Seldes believed uncensored interview could have prevented Hitler's rise to power.
World War II and Media
Edward R. Murrow (CBS): Radio reports from London, risked his life on bomber runs.
Murrow often wore a uniform.
The Office of Censorship asked the media to follow a voluntary code to protect military operations, to which they agreed.
Embedded Journalists in World War II
Ernie Pyle wrote columns on the ordeal and courage of troops.
Pyle was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire and awarded a Purple Heart.
The information was controlled; casualty figures were fudged.
The White House controlled the story of the atomic bomb.
"The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold…"
"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base…"
"It is an atomic bomb… a harnessing of the basic power of the universe."
The Atomic Bomb and Its Aftermath
Hiroshima contained a military base, but the bomb was dropped in the city center.
U.S. policy was to bomb Japanese civilian centers.
The media printed official press releases in their entirety.
William "Atomic Bill" Laurence (New York Times) was an A-bomb advocate on the Pentagon payroll.
Laurence was on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.
Laurence won a Pulitzer Prize but downplayed radiation's lethal effects.
Post-Atomic Bomb Reporting
Reporters barred from Hiroshima and Nagasaki but welcomed on the USS Missouri.
Wilfred Burchett (Australian journalist) reported on radiation sickness in Hiroshima.
Reports to the contrary were suppressed in the U.S. and Japan.
In the New York Times, William Laurence dismissed Japanese claims.
Censorship and Memory
George Weller (Chicago Daily News) reported from Nagasaki; dispatches were destroyed.
All censored information is fundamentally propaganda.
John Hersey's "Hiroshima" (The New Yorker) sold out within hours.
The memory of Hiroshima has kept the world safe from the bomb.
Vietnam War and Media
Journalists moved freely in Vietnam for much of the '60s.
Media and military were united in a common cause.
The narrative focused on brave boys fighting for the American way of life.
TV reporters attended daily briefings but rarely showed actual gore.
Morley Safer (CBS) reported on the burning of Cam Ne village.
The Tet Offensive
January 1968: North Vietnamese launched a coordinated attack on the South.
Many believed the Tet offensive soured America on the war and blamed the media for spinning the victory of Tet into political defeat.
Walter Cronkite: "We are mired in stalemate…"
Critics: Media distorted the truth and weakened America's will to defend itself.
Ronald Reagan: The "Vietnam Syndrome" was created by North Vietnamese aggressors.
Vietnam Syndrome
"VIETNAM SYNDROME" is one enduring phrase from the Vietnam War. "Credibility gap" is another.
Reporters initially did not question war policy but dissented on tactics.
The Five O'Clock Follies (daily briefings in Saigon) contradicted what reporters saw.
Reporters rejected official progress reports and reported what they saw.
Americans grew weary when the human cost of combat rises.
William Hammond: Every time the number of Americans killed and wounded increased by a factor of ten-from 1,000 to 10,000 to 100,000-public support dropped 15 points.
Cronkite suggested that if an enemy can absorb defeat after defeat yet continue to grow in number, "winning" is meaningless.
Hammond: Flawed strategy and bad intelligence alienated the American public.
The Gulf War and Media Control
George Bush Senior sought support for military action against Iraq in 1991.
Americans believed the U.S. fought in Vietnam with "one hand tied behind their back."
The actual toll of nearly two million, shrank to a median guess was around 100,000.
During the Gulf War, the media attended daily briefings with no assessment of civilian casualties.
Selected reporters were escorted to the battlefield in "pools."
Reports were reviewed by authorities and delayed.
Television rang with ecstatic appraisals of the war.
The more people watched TV, the less they knew about the history, politics, or the region.
The 2003 Iraq War and Embedded Journalists
The Pentagon changed course: Reporters would be embedded with the troops.
The goal was to build trust and admiration for the military.
The embeds' narrative was of brave soldiers risking their lives.
The rules were strict: Journalists who left their assigned units would not be allowed to return.
Some information could not be reported, (e.g., where the missiles landed, only where they were launched).
The U.S. military generated positive coverage of the Iraq invasion.
Experiences of Embedded Reporters
NPR's John Burnett checked in weekly with "On the Media."
Initial encouragement turned into frustration with the Pentagon routine.
After leaving the unit, Burnett reported on a village bombed by the U.S. Air Force, Al-Taniya.
Reflections on War Reporting
A war correspondent as hero.
There will be no wars again, like World War Two, when there was a unanimity of the righteousness of the cause.
Michael Herr's Vietnam War Coverage
Michael Herr covered Vietnam for Esquire in 1967.
He published "Dispatches," a graphic depiction of the war.
Reporters feared becoming one of those who had to have a war on all the time.
You were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did.
To report a war amidst official lies, commercial pressures, horror, trauma, principles, and patriotism is to be at war with oneself.