Reporting from the front lines

How long have journalists been covering wars?

For much of human history, the story of war was told only after the fighting had stopped—usually by soldiers on the winning side. At best, people back home had to rely on long-delayed letters from officers at the front. It wasn’t until the Crimean War in 1854 that the modern concept of the “war correspondent” was born. Britain’s declaration of war on Russia had proved “popular beyond belief,” in the words of Queen Victoria, and editors at several London dailies decided to feed the public’s hunger for detailed accounts of British victories. The Times of London resolved to send its own reporters to the front, and others followed.

How did the first war correspondents do?

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Their dispatches caused a public sensation. To his surprise, Times correspondent William Howard Russell found the British troops ill-prepared, confused, and poorly equipped. He wrote his editor and asked, “Am I to tell these things, or hold my tongue?” He and his colleagues opted to tell all, criticizing commanders for their “ignorance,” “folly,” and “blunders.” Russell also wrote of the price soldiers paid for their superiors’ mistakes. Fifteen minutes after the Light Cavalry Brigade began its charge, Russell wrote, “not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of the Muscovite guns.”

What did the military think of this?

Not much. In the final months of the Crimean conflict, Britain’s commander in chief, Sir William Codrington, issued an order forbidding reporters from publishing information that could be of value to the enemy. This, says author Phillip Knightley in his book The First Casualty, was the first act of military censorship.

Did censorship work?

Hardly. Newspapers in Europe and America took note of the wild popularity of the Crimean coverage. When the Civil War broke out in 1860, American newspapers sent hundreds of correspondents out to battlefields, and censorship was at best haphazard. Some Union officers bribed members of the press to print exaggerated accounts of their battlefield heroics. Others threatened to shoot reporters on sight. On his brutally efficient “march to the sea,” Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman refused to let journalists come along, complaining that they divulged secrets to the enemy. “If we shot all the reporters in the afternoon,” he said, “we’d have news from hell by breakfast.”

Did hostility to the press persist?

It has waxed and waned through various wars, depending on whether the military has viewed the truth as flattering or embarrassing. Amid the horrible carnage of World War I, the British government passed the Defense of the Realm Act, banning reporters from the front and giving military leaders the right to examine any cables from the war zone. The U.S., too, censored dispatches, though it did allow some reporters in the trenches.

What about World War II?

Censorship existed, but was rarely necessary. American reporters were given U.S. military uniforms with a large C for “correspondent” stitched into the sleeve, and most considered themselves part of the war effort. The tone of war coverage was set by the famous Ernie Pyle, who trudged from battle to battle for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain, filing moving, personal stories about the courageous infantrymen he accompanied. When Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper in 1945, soldiers in the 77th Infantry Division set up a monument on the spot.

Did the cozy relationship last?

Vietnam, the great American nightmare, proved to be its undoing. This was the first television war, with no censorship, and the nightly news brought the grisly sights and sounds of war into every living room. For the first time, civilians could actually see young soldiers being maimed or killed in battle. Reporters began challenging U.S. military leaders’ bogus body counts and misleading assessments of progress. In 1968, news surfaced of the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Soon newspapers published accounts of other atrocities. Without a doubt, media coverage helped turn public sentiment against the war.

How did the military react?

The same way it did after the Crimean War. After Vietnam, the military brass resolved to keep the press far away from the shooting. In the military invasions of Grenada and Panama, and in the first Gulf War, the press corps was penned up far from the action. Most correspondents got their news from briefings at the base, with a few escorted “pool” reporters getting sporadic views of the fighting. As a result, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf could fearlessly claim that Patriot missiles had been “100 percent” effective at shooting down Iraqi Scud missiles fired at Israel. Only after the war would journalists learn that not one of the Patriots had hit its mark.

So why the ‘embeds’ in Iraq?

In the Gulf War and more recently, in Afghanistan, generals were later disappointed there were no journalists to record one-sided victories. The Pentagon decided it didn’t want that to happen in Iraq. “We made a huge mistake trying to restrict press coverage because of our Vietnam mentality,” retired Gen. Wesley Clark recently said in The Wall Street Journal. In the Gulf War, Clark said, “We had a 1st Armored Division tank battle that was just incredible, perhaps the biggest armored battle ever, but not a single image was reported or documented for history by the press.”

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