Censorship and the Military

Although many might think that strained relations between the media and military officials first emerged during the Vietnam War, military–media relations in the United States have, in fact, been difficult since early in the republic's history. Such tensions have been especially sharp over the degree of censorship exercised by the military in wartime. During the Revolution, George Washington complained that Loyalist papers undermined morale while patriotic publishers often gave away sensitive military information. During the Civil War, the Union threatened reporters who breached censorship with courts-martial and took control of the telegraph lines in Washington, D.C., to better monitor communications. During World War I, reporters accredited to U.S. forces were sometimes stopped from traveling to the front lines to prevent disturbing reports from trickling back from the battlefield.

Military censorship is a complex issue not only because of 1st Amendment rights, but also because of the symbiotic relationship between the military and the media. Although operational security often requires that military officers conduct their business far from the eyes of a prying media, those same officers must have the support of their citizenry to conduct an effective war. To build political support for its operations and policies, the military relies on the media. The media shape public perceptions not only of success and failure in wartime, but of the military itself. This is no small consideration, especially in the age of the all volunteer force. For their part, reporters value access and prompt release of newsworthy (i.e., controversial) stories. Even though journalists often see themselves as the fourth estate (the institution that holds government accountable in a democracy), they also rely on the military for newsworthy material.

The nature of military censorship is also constantly in flux because it must respond to the political demands of the moment and to the emergence of new technologies that permit ever-increasing access to information and images from the battlefield. For years newsprint dominated wartime reporting, and newspapers could be monitored easily because of their need for centralized production. As [Page 109]the electronic and information revolution unfolded, however, more people have been equipped with ways to transmit images and data almost instantaneously to a global audience. Military censorship has, accordingly, become increasingly problematic.

During World War II, the U.S. government, specifically the Office of War Information, imposed strict censorship of radio, newsprint, and even the letters soldiers sent home to their families. Information about the Bataan Death March, for instance, was withheld from the U.S. public for most of the war to spare families unnecessary anguish. Nevertheless, censorship did not prevent outstanding radio reporting by Edward R, Murrow, nor did it prevent Ernie Pyle, the most famous “embedded journalist,” from winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his reporting on ordinary soldiers. Many young journalists made a career by risking life and limb while reporting from the front. Future television anchorman Walter Cronkite, for instance, served as a frontline reporter in the European theater covering the relief of Bastogne.

Reporters, however, did manage to irritate the high command with (true) stories of acrimony among senior Allied commanders and reports that the Nazis possessed superior weapons—also true. Additionally, wartime censorship could not prevent truly newsworthy stories from reaching the American public. In November 1943, Drew Pearson created quite a stir when he reported that Gen. George S. Patton had slapped two soldiers in Sicily in August 1943, and that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had apparently tried to cover up the incident. Pearson, however, did not make an effort to publish what would have been the greatest scoop of World War II—information about the U.S. development of the atomic bomb, which he had uncovered in 1943 but remained silent about.

...