Conflicts between the news media and the military are older than
the nation itself. During the Revolutionary War, colonial printers
found that they could wield the power of the press-when they weren't
dodging censorship, harassment, bullying and, in some cases, tar
and feathers.
Mostly, it depended on location. Newspapers in those days-and
well into the 20th century-were organs of opinion, not much different
from editorial pages today, although the writing was often more
colorful than it is now. So a Patriot printer in an area where
the majority population was sympathetic to the Revolution had
peace and press freedom as long as long as his readers agreed
with bashing the Loyalists.
Tory printers in such areas, however, led somewhat more interesting
lives. James Rivington, who published a New York newspaper loyal
to the Crown, suspended publication and fled to England after
"a group of armed men rode into New York on Nov. 27, 1775,
broke into the building, destroyed his press and carried away
the type, which was later melted into bullets for use of the Patriots."1
Patriot newspapers cooperated with the Revolutionary military,
publishing proclamations and orders, and "spreading any desirable
information." They also advertised rewards for deserters.
But they did not have reporters in the field. Sources for war
news were other publications, official proclamations and letters
from eyewitnesses.
The attitude of the military's civilian leadership toward the
press was not much different than one might find today. George
Washington reportedly was exasperated by dispatches in New York
newspapers, which he felt undermined the war effort against England.
"It is much to be wished," he wrote, "that our
printers were more discreet in many of their publications. We
see in almost every paper proclamations or accounts transmitted
by the enemy of an injurious nature."2
The War of 1812
A similar climate prevailed during the War of 1812. Although the
numbers of newspapers and the frequency of their publication had
increased, they still gathered information in a haphazard way
and suffered from problems of "insufficient resources, inadequate
methods for transmitting news, and disruptions caused by military
operations."3
Prevailing sentiments in a given location still determined whether
a newspaper could circulate peacefully, or whether it would be
a target. In Baltimore, a pro-war area, the Federal Republican,
a federalist newspaper, had its presses wrecked and its building
torn down by a mob angered by its anti-war stance.
After the defeat of the British in New Orleans, Gen. Andrew Jackson
imprisoned an editor who had the temerity to ignore Jackson's
demand that he secure the general's permission to print news dealing
with the war. When a judge issued a habeas corpus order
to free the editor, Jackson tried to court-martial the judge.
Fortunately for the judge and editor, Jackson's zealous pursuit
of the matter ended with the end of the war.
The War of 1812, however, did produce an eyewitness who was perhaps
America's first war correspondent. Kentuckian James M. Bradford,
editor of the Orleans Gazette, enlisted in Jackson's army
in New Orleans and wrote letters home to his newspaper describing
military operations. As in the Revolutionary War, there was no
need for security review or censorship because dispatches arrived
too late to be of any use to the enemy.
The Mexican War
By 1846 and the start of the war with Mexico, news-gathering and
technology had progressed to the point where civilian correspondents,
some using the newly invented telegraph and the pony express,
competed for scoops. Newspapers often were in "daily, sometimes
bitter competition for the latest word on anything of importance."4
The most enterprising reporter of the day was George W. Kendall,
who had founded the Picayune in New Orleans and had worked
on Horace Greeley's New Yorker as well as several Washington
newspapers. He worked the front lines, riding with McCullough's
Rangers and hobnobbing with generals. Historians credit him with
the first reports of "the great battles of Contreras and
Churubusco, near [the] Mexican capital." Yet despite such
efforts and the new technology, newspaper accounts of military
actions still often were 10 days old.
"Camp newspapers" surfaced for the first time during
the Mexican War, and could be regarded as the first military public
affairs effort. Historian Frank L. Mott says the papers were published
by soldier-printers and were used by civilian newspapers "as
a chief source of news from the seat of the war."
The Civil War
"Real-time" reporting emerged for the first time during
the bloody four years of the Civil War, a time when government
and military leaders in both the North and the South did their
utmost to suppress publication of information deemed inimical
to the war effort, which often simply meant something they didn't
like. At the same time, leaders such as President Abraham Lincoln
became convinced that newspapers were one of the keys to maintaining
popular support.
For their part, the newspapers proved themselves mostly irrepressible,
often publishing orders of battle and other military information
of use to the enemy. In April 1861, the federal government seized
control of all the telegraph lines leading to Washington. The
following August, the War Department issued the 57th Article of
War, which warned journalists that they could be court-martialed
if they disclosed sensitive information. Newspapers mostly ignored
the order, and it was never strictly enforced.
The Associated Press was created during the Civil War. As today,
the AP pooled the resources of many subscribing papers to field
an army of correspondents. The AP supplemented journalistic coverage
with papers and printed correspondence received from soldiers
at the front.
The federal government also used the AP as a way to communicate
administrative actions to the people. "Washington,"
according to one historian, "recognized the potential usefulness
of the AP-the first mass communication medium of national scope-as
an indispensable tool to access a national constituency simultaneously."
Of about 500 journalists who covered the war for Northern newspapers,
about 150 went out into the field with the soldiers. Although
some argued that they should be treated as noncombatants, others
took an active role as aides and messengers. A few even fought
in battles. Historian James Melvin Lee has written that field
correspondents were "quite as liable to attack by the enemy
as enlisted men and were sometimes attached to officer's staffs,
and served as aides, dispatch carriers or signal officers. Some
were killed in action, some wounded and some captured."
The correspondents were not universally loved, however. Various
military commanders denied them access to the action and, along
with government officials, tried to limit the information presented
in newspapers.
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was the most notorious press hater
in the military ranks. He fiercely believed that there was a direct
relationship between censorship and military victory and argued
that the press should have no rights during war. Sherman blamed
the press for the North's defeat at the first Battle of Bull Run,
which the South called the First Manassas. That was because of
reports in the Washington Star and The New York Times
that listed the order of battle.
The Times story reported: "The army in Virginia took
up the line of March for Richmond, via Fairfax and Manassas. The
force starting today was fully fifty thousand strong ... about
three thousand Regular Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery, and fifty
thousand Volunteers."5
In March 1862, the secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, ordered
the military governor of the District of Columbia to seize The
Sunday Chronicle, which had published information about military
movements, and to destroy all copies of the newspaper. Stanton
also worked the other side of the press-military relationship.
In wartime communiqués, he "deliberately distorted
accounts of key battles and manipulated casualty figures to present
a more positive account of the Union army's performance."6
Newspapers of the day were still one-sided politically, and the
Copperhead papers denounced the war and its civilian and military
leadership. Lincoln was called a tyrant and "the widow-maker."
Out west, The Chicago Times was closed for three days for
its "violent Copperheadism," which had allegedly fomented
treason and distrust of the war effort.
Lincoln was pressured to suppress such radicalism. He wrote of
his dilemma in a note to Erastus Corning, a leader of the Democrats
in New York: "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who
deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who
induces him to desert ... ?"7
Southern newspapers fared poorly in the war. With not much in
the way of resources, they could not field many correspondents.
Those who went out usually found themselves shut out of the action
by Confederate commanders. As a result, Southern readers were
mostly deprived of first-hand war news.
"The experience of the Civil War demonstrated an inherent
tension between the aims of journalists and the aims of soldiers
in wartime,"8 Loren B. Thompson wrote in
Defense Beat. "Soldiers wanted to avoid disclosure
of sensitive information and objected to criticism of their performance.
Journalists wanted unrestricted access to military information
and the ability to use it in whatever manner they saw fit. Soldiers
placed a premium on organization and discipline; war correspondents
were so undisciplined and eccentric that one of their own characterized
them as 'bohemians.'9
"Friction between these divergent priorities and styles was
inevitable, as each new conflict after the Civil War illustrated.
In the Spanish-American War, in World Wars I and II, in Korea
and Vietnam, the tension continually reasserted itself, producing
resentment and animosity between soldiers and representatives
of the fourth estate."10
The Spanish-American War
By the time of the Spanish-American War, news dissemination had
improved dramatically. Electric motors drove printing presses,
the Linotype machine simplified typesetting, the Atlantic cable
had been laid, telegraph wires spanned the country from coast
to coast, and the telephone had come into use.
The war coincided with the rise of sensationalist "yellow
journalism," exemplified by two bitterly competitive newspapers
in New York City-Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William
Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. "The war was unquestionably
avoidable and occurred largely to satisfy the promotional goals
of competing New York newspapers," Loren Thompson wrote.
The war "marked a moral low point in the coverage of conflicts
by the American press."11
The government retaliated by banning reporters from combat zones
and closing cable offices. But there were so many leaks, the efforts
were largely unsuccessful. In one incident, an Army commander,
Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, turned the press coverage into a disinformation
campaign by landing his troops at Guanica on the south coast of
Puerto Rico instead of at Point Fajardo on the north coast. It
surprised even the War Department.
"So much publicity had been given the enterprise that I decided
to do what the enemy least expected, and instead of going or making
a demonstration at Point Fajardo, I decided to go directly to
Guanica," Miles said later.12
World War I
During World War I, "hysteria and public concerns about national
loyalty ... led Congress to enact some of the most severe restrictions
on speech and the press in the nation's history."13
The Espionage Act, enacted June 15, 1917, prohibited the publication
of any information that could even remotely be considered to offer
aid to the enemy. It also banned interference with American military
operations or war production and, along with the Sedition Act
of 1918, was used to justify censorship.
The Sedition Act forbade any criticism of "the conduct or
actions of the United States government or its military forces,
including disparaging remarks about the flag, military uniforms,
similar badges or symbols. ..."14
At the outset, newspapers and war correspondents were expected
to voluntarily submit to censorship. President Woodrow Wilson's
Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, asked
newspapers to refrain from printing "advance reports about
troop strengths, troop and ship movements, anti-aircraft defenses
and harbor defenses."15 The military also
asked the press to voluntarily censor descriptions of military
policies, plans and movements; ports of embarkation, mines and
harbor defenses, and any photographs that might show any of those
things.
Eventually, Creel's committee maintained offices in every neutral
and Allied country. It "issued a daily newspaper, operated
a press service that fed information to the news media, produced
films and foreign language publications, and enlisted a corps
of 75,000 patriotic speakers reaching into every part of the nation."16
To report on the war, each correspondent had to be certified as
an accredited or a visiting correspondent. The former lived permanently
in military camps, while the latter were temporarily with units.
All correspondents were required to swear an oath to write the
truth, to put up a $10,000 bond, and to sign an agreement to submit
all correspondence, except for personal letters, to the press
officer or his assistant. (Personal letters were censored elsewhere
with regular mail.)
"[T]he correspondent agreed to repeat no information he received
at the front unless it had previously passed the censor; he was
to give neither name nor location of any unit; there was to be
no revelation of future plans or of any information that Military
Intelligence might have thought of value to the enemy, and the
correspondent agreed to accept the press officer's instruction
as to further censorship rules from time to time."17
Reporters had their press passes revoked if they failed to clear
stories with the censors-a punishment that was imposed on just
five correspondents.
The postmaster general also had broad authority to censor and,
at one point, revoked the second-class mailing privilege of the
Socialist Milwaukee Leader because the newspaper opposed
the war.
Frederick Palmer, the chief American censor for the U.S. Army
in Europe, who had been a newsman, said he led a double life,
working as "a public liar to keep up the spirit of the armies
and people of our side."18
World War II
Despite the immediate imposition of censorship after the outbreak
of World War II, the war represented the high-water mark of military-media
relations. The country, including news organizations and their
reporters, was of one patriotic mind. Journalists wore uniforms
and traveled with military units, and editors accepted battlefield
and home-front censorship as the price of national security.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of War Information
and the Office of Censorship in 1942. The latter administered
press codes that told journalists in great detail what matters
they were not allowed to report in words or pictures, including
location, movements and identity of units, ships and aircraft;
war production and supplies; weather forecasts and temperatures
in major cities; casualties, and even locations of archives and
art treasures.
The military also had its own censors, who had "the right
to curb the release of news about their combat activities that
was deemed to be potentially harmful to their fighting effectiveness."19
But unlike the civilian agencies, the military censors operated
without guidelines and, therefore, were sometimes capricious.
Historian Frederick S. Voss wrote that there were times "when
the full extent of Allied failures and losses were kept out of
public print, not because disclosure might help the enemy in playing
to Allied weaknesses, but simply because it reflected negatively
on the Allied performance."20
Gen. Douglas MacArthur was the most notorious practitioner of
that form of censorship. If he didn't like a story, it was changed
to suit him. His command often was reported as having low or light
casualties. If a reporter found anything to the contrary, the
story simply would not pass the military censors.
The military used accreditation to control who went to the battlefield.
Correspondents needed a press pass from the War Department and
a passport from the State Department. Once shipped off to the
front, reporters were assigned to "press camps"-facilities
that were attached to regular military forces and were capable
of handling administration, communication and briefings.
Each press camp was to follow a field army across Western Europe.
"There were fifty correspondents in each of these camps,"21
according to historian Lilya Wagner. "First the correspondent
would be accredited ... then join a press camp and follow the
army's activities as closely as was safe."22
Accredited correspondents wore officers' uniforms without rank
insignia, although visiting correspondents were allowed to wear
mufti. The visitors, which included publishers of newspapers or
magazines, came with special permission, were limited to a fixed
itinerary, and ordinarily were accompanied by an escort officer,
according to historian Robert W. Desmond.23
Radio correspondents set up what could be regarded as a precursor
of the modern press pool. They were forced to work together because
of limited radio transmission facilities. "One correspondent
might serve as a 'neutral voice' to be carried by any or all networks,"
Desmond wrote.24
There were also special "combat correspondents." These
were usually volunteers who had been journalists or writers before
the war. They went into the service as enlisted men and went through
regular Marine training. After participating in or observing military
actions, the correspondents would have their stories, photographs,
or motion pictures processed, censored, released, and distributed
by the Navy Department. "Three reported the Guadalcanal-Tulagi
landings in August 1942, and on September 1, forty-eight additional
Marine combat correspondents were ready to join units in the Pacific."25
The Espionage Act of World War I was still in force, but censors
were reluctant to enforce it, preferring to persuade news organizations
to follow guidelines. The persuasion was almost universally successful,
with news organizations mostly accepting censorship. Nevertheless,
the nation's news organizations eventually provided the American
public with comprehensive coverage of the war.
The Korean War
The Korean War, described in its day as a "police action,"
produced a curious reaction in the news media. At the outset,
there was no censorship whatsoever. Members of the media voluntarily
censored themselves, based on their own guidelines. "[S]o
the correspondents wrote freely of 'whipped and frightened GIs,'
of the panic of the poor example set by many officers, of the
lack of equipment-'you can't even get a tank with a carbine'-of
the general desperation, horror and lack of purpose."26
But the voluntary guidelines caused some security leaks, as well
as confusion in the press corps, and critics argued that media
criticism was negatively influencing public opinion in the United
States. As a result, the Overseas Press Club petitioned the Defense
Department to impose censorship, so reporters and editors would
have precise guidelines for what they could report.
The military established a censorship scheme similar to what had
existed in World War II, with censors reviewing every story, message,
broadcast, photograph, and newsreel film. "Reporters were
not allowed to print articles about food shortages, panics, inferior
U.S. equipment or the rampant corruption in the South Korean government."27
Censorship extended well beyond security concerns. A story could
be released only if it was accurate, did not disclose military
information, would "not deteriorate morale" and would
not "cause embarrassment to the United States or its allies."28
MacArthur broadened the provisions to rule out any criticism of
decisions made by United Nations commanders in the field, as well
as "conduct by allied soldiers on the battlefield."29
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War-the only war in history lost by the United States-produced
both a high point and a low point in the relationship between
the military and the media. The high, for the reporters and news
organizations, was that no censorship was ever imposed. Journalists
were free to cover whatever they wished, subject to the availability
of military operations and transportation, and their copy, photographs
and films went out unimpeded by any security review.
The low point came when some members of the military blamed press
coverage for the loss of the war. Although interviews indicate
that that opinion apparently is no longer held by top civilian
and military leaders of the nation's defense establishment, it
still is widespread among military officers. In an opinion poll
conducted for this study, 64% of the military officers surveyed
said they strongly agreed or agreed somewhat with the statement
that "news media coverage of the events in Vietnam harmed
the war effort." On the media side, only 17% of those who
responded to the poll held that opinion. [See p. 31, 183.]
Melvin R. Laird, who served as secretary of defense from 1968
to 1972 and who presided over Vietnamization and the withdrawal
of American forces from Vietnam, said he had encountered that
opinion among many military officers. But he said it was wrong.
"They think that the press is the reason we did not do well
in Vietnam," he said. "They think that it was the press
getting after Lyndon Johnson, and driving him out of office. But
it was Vietnam that did it. That was an unpopular war. I don't
blame the press. I blame the way President Johnson handled it."30
Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said he was one who came away from Vietnam with a sour taste in
his mouth, convinced that something had gone badly wrong in the
relationship between the military and the news media. He said
he believed there was a built-in distrust of the media among military
men and women.
"I think we keep shooting ourselves in the foot," he
said. "We still have people, in my generation, who think
if they solved the Vietnam problem, whatever the hell it was,
then we're okay. But even if we solve Vietnam, today, the world
is different than it was in Vietnam. Technology is different.
Reporting of events is a different issue. Access to things that
are ongoing is a different issue than it was in Vietnam. Yet some
of my generation are still trying to solve that problem. Youngsters
are probably doing it, too. I haven't given it much thought, but
I would think that they're doing it as a kind of a reflection
of what they hear from some of their elders. You know, real men
don't talk to the press ...."31
Endnotes
1. Charles M. Thomas, "The Publication of
Newspapers During the American Revolution," Journalism
Quarterly. December 1932, 9: 363.
2. Lloyd J. Matthews, ed., Newsmen and National
Defense: Is Conflict Inevitable? (Washington: Brassey's Publishing,
1991), p. ix.
3. Loren B. Thompson, Defense Beat: The Dilemmas
of Defense Coverage (New York: Lexington Books, 1991), p.
6.
4. Matthews, op. cit., pp. 3-4.
7. Harold L. Nelson, ed., Freedom of the Press
from Hamilton to the Warren Court (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1967), pp. 229-230.
12. Charles Henry Brown, The Correspondents'
War: Journalists in the Spanish-American War (New York: Scribner
Publishing, 1967), p. 389.
13. Matthew J. Jacobs, "Assessing the Constitutionality
of Press Restrictions in the Persian Gulf War," Stanford
Law Review (February 1992), 44: 681.
14. Everette E. Dennis, Of Media and People
(Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992), p. 10.
15. Michael W. Klein, "The Censor's Red
Flair, the Bombs Bursting in Air: The Constitutionality of the
Desert Storm Media Restrictions," Hastings Constitutional
Law (Summer 1992), 19: 1044.
17. James Robert Mock, Censorship 1917.
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 103.
19. Frederick Voss, Reporting the War: The
Journalistic Coverage of World War II (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press for the National Portrait Gallery, 1994), pp.
20-21.
21. Lilya Wagner, Women War Correspondents
of World War II (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 2.
23. Robert William Desmond, Tides of War:
World News Reporting, 1931-1945, (Iowa City: University of
Iowa Press, 1984) p. 238.
26. Phillip Knightley. The First Casualty:
From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist,
and Myth Maker (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975),
p. 337.
27. Michael Linfield, Freedom Under Fire:
U.S. Civil Liberties in Times of War (Boston: South End Press,
1990), p. 74.
28. Karl Tage Olson, "The Constitutionality
of Department of Defense Press Restrictions on Wartime Correspondents
Covering the Persian Gulf War." Drake Law Review,
41: 518.
29. Knightley, op. cit., p. 337.
30. Melvin R. Laird, interview by Frank Aukofer,
Washington, D.C., Jan. 26, 1995.
31. Gen. John Shalikashvili, interview by authors,
Washington, D.C., Dec. 29, 1994.
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