The Ascendancy of Radio News in Wartime

Abstract

CBS's Charles Collingwood and NBC's John MacVane played crucial roles in reporting on the political controversies that surfaced in the aftermath of the Torch landings in French North Africa in 1942. Material circumstances combined with the skill of these journalists to enable the broadcast networks to cover the confusing events in North Africa in a more timely and accurate manner than did American newspapers. Collingwood and MacVane won for broadcast journalists a place at the table, and Torch would be the last major campaign that was planned with radio something less than a full partner in coverage of the war. Moreover, Collingwood and MacVane fiercely resisted the political censorship imposed by the Allied military authorities there. In this light the relationship of the media and the military in World War II looks surprisingly more like that of later wars than most accounts would lead us to believe.

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Richard Fine

RICHARD FINE is professor of English and coordinator of the American studies program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of two books about Hollywood and the profession of authorship: West of Eden: Writers in Hollywood, 1928–1940 and James M. Cain and the American Authors’ Authority. He is at work on a book about the American media and the military during World War II.