The New History of War Reporting: A Historiographical Perspective on the Role of the Media and War

Abstract

The following essay argues for a new method of studying the media at war. While past scholarship has focused on war correspondents, censorship, and propaganda, this new history of war reporting instead investigates how news shaped the decisions of commanders on the battlefield. In other words, instead of focusing on how governments and militaries attempted to control the press the new history of war reporting flips the question to investigate how the media influenced the decisions of commanders on the battlefield. This essay drawls from the author’s new book The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II.

Notes

1 Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 262, 268, 257, 177–183; Bill Yenne, Panic on the Pacific: How America Prepared for a West Coast Invasion (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2016), 128.

2 Alan Barth to R. Keith Kane, January 5, 1942, Survey of Intelligence Material no. 4, Box 145, Folder Office of Facts and Figures, SF, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York; Interview with Lt. Gen. James Doolittle by “Mac” Laddon, August 14, 1970, Reel 43812, Archives Branch, Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.

3 James M. Scott, Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015), 2–3.

4 Stimson’s Diary, The Henry Lewis Stimson Diaries (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Library, 1942, April 18).

5 Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan (New York: Ballantine Books, 1955), 72, 73, 213–214.

6 Kevin Williams, “Something More Important than Truth: Ethical Issues in War Reporting,” in Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media, edited by Andrew Belsey and Ruth Chadwick (New York: Routledge, 1992), 155; Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of The Times (London: Heinemann, 1982), 83–84; Nathan A. Haverstock, Fifty Years at the Front: The Life of War Correspondent Frederick Palmer (London: Brassey’s, 1996), 27; Andrew Lambert and Stephen Badsey, The War Correspondents: The Crimean War (Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1994), 1.

7 Michael S. Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 20.

8 Brendan Simms, Hitler: A Global Biography (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 354.

9 William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1st ed. (New York: Dell Publishing, 1978), 286.

10 Omar Bradley and Clay Blair, A General’s Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 119; Samuel Eliot Morison, Strategy and Compromise (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1958), 38–39.

11 Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, 192 and 196.

12 Alexander G. Lovelace, The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2022). This argument was expanded chronologically in “Meade and the Media: Civil War Journalism and the New History of War Reporting,” The Journal of Military History 85 no. 4 (October 2021): 907–929.

13 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); John Hohenberg, Foreign Correspondence: The Great Reporters and their Times (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995); and Sweeney, The Military and the Press. See also, Joseph J. Mathews, Reporting the Wars (Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota Press, 1957); Paul L. Moorcraft and Philip M. Taylor, Shooting the Messenger: The Political Impact of War Reporting (Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2008); Jean Hood, War Correspondent: Reporting Under Fire Since 1850 (London: Anova Books, 2011); Michael Nicholson, A State of War Exists: Reporters in the Line of Fire (London: Biteback Publishing, 2012).

14 J. Cutler Andrews, The North Reports the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955). For examples of studies of journalism during a specify conflict see, J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970); Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Richard Collier, The Warcos: The War Correspondents of World War Two (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989); Robert W. Desmond, Tides of War: World News Reporting 1931-1945 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1982); William M. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998); Ray Moseley, Reporting War: How Foreign Correspondents Risked Capture, Torture and Death to Cover World War II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017); James M. Perry, A Bohemian Brigade The Civil War Correspondents—Mostly Rough, Sometimes Ready (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000).

15 Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson, The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996); Timothy M. Gay, Assignment to Hell: The War Against Nazi Germany with Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A. J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle (New York: Penguin Group, 2012); Robert H. Patton, Hell Before Breakfast: America’s First War Correspondents Making History and Headlines, from the Battlefields of the Civil War to the Far Reaches of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Pantheon Books, 2014).

16 A comprehensive list of biographies and memoirs of war correspondents is omitted because of length.

17 For military journalism see Jack E. Pulwers, The Press of Battles: The GI Reporter and the American People (Raleigh, NC: Ivy House Publishing Group, 2003); Herbert Mitgang, Newsmen in Khaki: Tales of a World War II Soldier Correspondent (New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004). For scholarship on photojournalism see Jerry J. Joswick and Lawrence A. Keating, Combat Camera Man (New York: Pyramid Book, 1961); John Taylor, War Photography: Realism in the British Press (New York: Routledge, 1991); Peter Maslowski, Armed with Cameras: The American Military Photographers of World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1993); George H. Roeder Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War Two (New Haven: Ct: Yale University Press, 1993); Neil McDonald, War Cameraman: The Story of Damien Parer (Victoria: A Lothian Book, 1994); Fred McGlade, The History of the British Film & Photographic Unit in the Second World War (West Midlands, England: 2010).

18 For histories of female war correspondents see, Lilya Wagner, Women War Correspondents of World War II (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Nancy Caldwell Sorel, The Women Who Wrote the War: The Riveting Saga of World War II’s Daredevil Women Correspondents (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999); Carolyn M. Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, the U.S. Military, and the Press, 1846–1947 (New York: Lexington Books, 2017). For books dealing with the African American press at war see Patrick S. Washburn, A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press During World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Lawrence Allen Eldridge, Chronicles of a Two-Front War: Civil Rights and Vietnam in the African American Press (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011); Paul Alkebulan, The African American Press in World War II: Toward Victory at Home and Abroad (New York: Lexington Books, 2014).

19 Jeffery A. Smith, War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For more on censorship over different wars see John Byrne Cooke, Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War on Terrorism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007); Mary S. Mander, Pen and Sword: American War Correspondents, 1898–1975 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010).

20 Michael S. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). For a selection of books on censorship see Theodore F. Koop, Weapon of Silence (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1946); Roeder, The Censored War; Donal Ó Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, 1939–1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 1996); Mark Bourrie, The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada’s Media in World War Two (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2012).

21 Robert Cole, Propaganda, Censorship and Irish Neutrality in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006); Robert Edwin Herzstein, The War That Hitler Won: The Most Infamous Propaganda Campaign in History (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1978); Clayton D. Laurie, The Propaganda Warriors: America’s Crusade Against Nazi Germany (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996); Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003).

22 A few titles from this extensive field are Charles Cruickshank, The Fourth Arm: Psychological Warfare 1938–1945 (London: Davis-Poynter, 1977); Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information 1942–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Michael Balfour, Propaganda in War 1939–1945: Organisations, Policies and Publics in Britain and Germany (London: Routlesge & Kegan Paul, 1979); Clayton D. Laurie, The Propaganda Warriors: America’s Crusade Against Nazi Germany (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996); Susan A. Brewer, To Win the Peace: British Propaganda in the United States During World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); David Welch, World War II Propaganda: Analyzing the Art of Persuasion during Wartime (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017).

23 Howard Becker, “The Nature and Consequences of Black Propaganda,” American Sociological Review 14, no. 2 (1949): 221–235; Stanley, Newcourt-Nowodworski, Black Propaganda in the Second World War (Gloucestershire, England: Sutton Publishing, 2005); Welch, World War II Propaganda; Beatriz Lopez, “Muriel Spark and the Art of Deception: Constructing Plausibility with the Methods of WWII Black Propaganda,” The Review of English Studies, New Series, 71, no. 302, (August 2020): 969–986.

24 Piers Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention (New York: Routledge, 2002), 2. For other definitions see Steven Livingston, “Clarifying the CNN Effect: An Examination of Media Effects According to Type of Military Intervention,” Research Paper R-18, The Joan Shorenstein Center, (June 1997): 1; Steven Livingston, “Beyond the ‘CNN Effect’: The Media-Foreign Policy Dynamic,” in Politics and the Press: The News Media and Their Influences, edited by Pippa Norris (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997), 291; Warren P. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s Influence on Peace Operations (Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 4–5; Stephen Hess and Marvin Kalb, eds., The Media and the War on Terrorism (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 63.

25 Livingston, “Beyond the ‘CNN Effect,’” 291; Robinson, The CNN Effect; Though he looks at the media’s effect on foreign policy more broadly Chiara de Franco argues that the press does have power over policy decisions; Chiara De Franco, Media Power and the Transformation of War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 4. See also chapter two of Graham Spencer, The Media and Peace: From Vietnam to the ‘War on Terror’ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

26 Warren P. Strobel writes that the relationship between foreign-policy and the media is much more complicated than policymakers simply being influenced by what they see on the news and that reporters are rarely able to move policy themselves. Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, 5. Eytan Gilboa notes the lack of empirical evidence for the CNN Effect and argues that the phenomena are mostly exaggerated Eytan Gilboa, “The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of International Relations,” Political Communications 22 no. 1 (2005): 29.

27 Shanto Iyengar and Adam Simon, “News Coverage of the Gulf Crisis and Public Opinion: A Study of Agenda-setting, Priming, and Framing,” in Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, edited by W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994); Larry Minear, Colin Scott, and Weiss, The News Media, Civil War, and Humanitarian Action (London: Lynne Rienner, 1996); Stephen Badsey, “The Influence of the Media on Recent British Military Operation,” in War, Culture and the Media: Representations of the Military in 20th Century Britain, edited by Ian Stewart and Susan L. Carruthers (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); Livingston, “Beyond the ‘CNN Effect,’”; Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy; Robinson, The CNN Effect; Franco, Media Power and the Transformation of War.

28 Daniel Fitzsimmons, “Media Power and American Military Strategy: Examining the Impact of Negative Media Coverage on US Strategy in Somalia and the Iraq War,” Innovations: A Journal of Politics 6 (2006): 53.

29 These fields are listed in Golboa, “The CNN Effect,” 31.

30 William M. Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962–1969 (Washington DC: Center of Military History United States Army, 1988); and Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1968–1973 (Washington DC: Center of Military History United States Army, 1996).

31 Steven Casey, The War Beat, Europe: The American Media at War Against Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Casey, The War Beat, Pacific: The American Media at War Against Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

32 Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, “Warriors of Word and Sword: The Battle of Okinawa, Media Coverage, and Truman’s Reevaluation of Strategy in the Pacific,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 23, no. 4 (2016): 334–367.

33 P.M.H. Bell, “War, Foreign Policy and Public Opinion: Britain and the Darlan Affair, November-December 1942,” Journal of Strategic Studies 5 no. 3 (1982): 393–415, reproduced in The Second World War, vol. 7, Alliance Politics and Grand Strategy, edited by Jeremy Black (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 139–415; Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War Against Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Richard W. Steele, The First Offensive 1942: Roosevelt, Marshall and the Making of American Strategy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973).

34 Lovelace, The Media Offensive, 7.

35 Ibid., 9.

36 For more on this topic see the author’s recent article “Tomorrow’s Wars and the Media,” Parameters: United States Army War College Quarterly no 2 (Summer 2022): 117–134.

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Alexander G. Lovelace

Dr. Alexander G. Lovelace’s research focuses on World War II, command decisions, and military-media relations. He has written numerous articles including for the Journal of Military History, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, and Journalism History. His first book The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II was published by the University Press of Kansas in 2022. Currently, he is a scholar in residence at the Contemporary History Institute in Athens, Ohio.