War Correspondents

Pioneers

Journalists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries rarely acted as field correspondents, relying instead on letters from soldiers, gossip, and other newspapers as means of collecting information. Furthermore, “war correspondence” implies a measure of substantial, purposeful coverage, yet early chroniclers included amateurs and victims of circumstance. Some historians nominate John Bell (1745–1831) of London's Oracle and Public Advertiser, who witnessed cannonading from a Flemish tower in 1794, as the first war journalist. However, Bell was visiting the Continent intending to round up letter writers for the Oracle; it was only after he arrived that he decided to report on his own. The first journalist commissioned to cover war news probably was diarist and lawyer Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867). The London Times hired him in 1807 to write about Napoleon's army on the Continent. Although Robinson described the Battle of Freidland and other military actions, he never witnessed combat. Instead, he gathered information from hotels and German-language newspapers. The first to report as an eyewitness from a war zone may have been Charles Lewis Gruneison (1806–79), who wrote about engagements of the Spanish civil war of the 1830s for the London Morning Post.

War correspondence became widely established by the middle of the nineteenth century, when American journalists observed the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and Irish-born correspondent William Howard Russell (1821–1907) helped topple the British government by exposing the barbarity and mismanagement of the Crimean War (1853–56) in the London Times.

Elements of the Job

War correspondence is widely considered one of the most significant forms of journalism. “War journalists are thought to do what all journalists do, only in a more heightened, vibrantly important [Page 1442]fashion,” wrote professors Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer.

The work can be rewarding. Top war correspondents have won many Pulitzer Prizes and other honors. However, journalists who report from war zones typically suffer higher casualty rates than actual combatants, as was the case in America's wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In addition, war correspondents suffer higher rates of divorce and substance abuse than their counterparts. According to a study by Canadian psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein, 29 percent of war journalists suffer post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their prolonged exposure to violence.

In addition to the physical and psychological toll, war's horrors create difficult choices for journalists. The high drama of combat coverage can expand audiences for newspapers, radio, television, and Internet news sites. However, if journalists share detailed accounts of violence, they risk alienating the public as well as the armed forces and the government that typically provide them logistical support. Correspondents also must choose between the news industry's norm of objectivity and their own pro- or antiwar attitudes. They often compromise by practicing a measure of self-censorship. “We edited ourselves much more than we were edited,” novelist John Steinbeck wrote of his time as a World War II correspondent. “We felt responsible to what was called the home front. There was a general feeling that unless the home front was carefully protected from whole account of what war was like, it might panic.” He concluded that war reporters who tried to tell the unvarnished truth faced expulsion by military authorities (Steinbeck 1986, xvii). New York Times war reporter Christopher Hedges (1956–), writing about the wars at the end of the twentieth century, similarly noted the anger war correspondents created among their audiences when their stories and pictures exploded popular myths. For example, journalists debunked initial reports of heroic resistance by Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch to avoid capture during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A year later, journalists revealed that former National Football League star Pat Tillman, whom the Army had awarded a posthumous Silver Star for heroism in Afghanistan, had died from friendly fire. The delayed truth led to widespread public suspicion that the Pentagon had tried to manipulate the news for public relations purposes.

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