'the Press as Affected by the War'
by Oswald Garrison Villard
from 'the Times History of the War'
from 'the American Review of Reviews' January 1915
Getting information from the fighting fronts has always been difficult, but during World War I censorship came down very heavily on all news pertaining to the armed forces. Generals, admirals and national leaders were as concerned in protecting themselves and covering their mistakes as divulging military intelligence. Under the guise of protecting the country and its fighting men, the news was politically doctored to convey the brilliance of leadership.
Publishers of newspapers and periodicals, faced with rising costs and an audience thirsting for war news, felt a terrible frustration. Oswald Garrison Villard, the president of the New York Evening Post, discusses the hardship of producing a daily newspaper in a war-torn world.
For one thing this war has made it impossible to revive to any extent the old charge that the newspapers brought it on. Unquestionably, the Austrian press had much to do with preparing the public mind for the ultimatum to Servia, the sensational murder of the Archduke giving it the excuse for every sort of accusation and hostile attack upon their small but, to them, pestiferous neighbor, Servia. In England the London Times, during the critical days from July 28 to August 3, printed a series of despatches from St. Petersburg of which it will not be maintained that they made for anything else than bad blood, though they must have given immense satisfaction in the Czar's capital.
Other British newspapers of jingo type, Conservative and Liberal, eagerly upheld the Foreign Minister, for whom Bernard Shaw hopes a reduction at least to the rank of Prime Minister as a result of this national crisis, so that he may not have the power to involve England in war all by himself. But the time was so short between the first alarm and the actual beginning of hostilities that the Hessians of the press were not able really to bring their batteries into action, particularly in Germany, where early appreciation of the overwhelming magnitude of the danger added sobriety to their first-page leaders.
By and large, the press was as much surprised by the suddenness with which the tornado burst as anyone else. There was no time given prior to hostilities for the mobilization of correspondents and scouts. Veteran war reporters, usually able to scent trouble from afar, and ready for the first shots, were caught unprepared and far from the scene of action. The paralyzing of ocean traffic made it all the more difficult to reach the front, and when the correspondents did finally arrive there, never was a military front so coldly inhospitable.
For another thing, if this war lasts as long as Lord Kitchener prophesies, it ought effectually to dispose of the familiar popular fallacy that war is a good thing for the press. Newspaper men have put up with no more trying person than the friend who slaps them on the back and says, "Well, old man, this war may be bad for some kinds of business, but it's fine for yours." Nothing could be further from the truth. Newspapers, for some devilish reason or another, may incite to war, as did some of our "yellows" in 1898, and the London Times prior to the Boer war, but they pay a pretty price for it even when it does not bring with it a national industrial and financial depression. There is nothing that a business manager or managing editor dreads as much as war, for nothing so quickly sends up the budget. There are special correspondents and their expenses, the costly pictures to illustrate their articles; the staff photographers, when such are permitted; the cost of extra news services and of the reports of such star syndicate writers as Richard Harding Davis. * (see also by Richard Harding Davis : Paris in War-Time)
The cable tolls go up with such rapidity that one great New York daily has sent an expert editor to London merely to take out the needless words from cable messages, and he is understood to be much more than covering his salary by the savings he makes. Thus far the Associated Press, which serves goo American newspapers, has met the enormously increased cost of cabling by cutting down on its domestic news and drawing on its surplus.
Not in the lifetime of men of fifty has so little news about the rest of the country appeared in the Eastern press as in these last few months. On one day in September two of the leading New York newspapers contained five and six pages of cable news from Europe while one newspaper printed three. The other four papers didn't carry any news from any domestic points outside of New York, excepting Washington. Not until election time came was there a substantial change in this situation. Thus, among the curious effects of the war has been a temporary news isolation of the West, South, and North from the East.
Then there are the extra editions. They involve heavy expense, not only in composition and paper, but in actual handling. There are extra trips to be made by wagons and bundle-carriers, while the cost of expressing and mailing of bundles to suburbs and nearby cities has to be met. But, says the layman, you are selling more newspapers and so making plenty of money. Unfortunately for the newspaper publisher, this is not true, particularly for the newspapers sold at one cent. The proceeds from the sale of copies of the newspaper never meet the cost of the paper upon which they are printed unless the issue is held down to twelve pages, so that increased circulation, unless accompanied by increased advertising, is a loss. In fact, the average publisher regards a large circulation as undesirable in itself, but as a means to an end. He wants a large output so that he may influence the advertiser to pay him for announcing his goods, for, as few laymen can seem to understand, it is the advertising which supports our journals and gives them their profit.
But, the reader may ask, if you obtain an increase in advertising with an increase in circulation, does not a war largely add to a newspapers advertising revenues? To this the answer is that a war checks advertising fully as effectively, if not perhaps more quickly, than a financial panic, and this applies to magazines as well as dailies. This is particularly true of the present struggle. T. P.'s Weekly, the well-known London publication, declared soon after the outbreak of the war that if hostilities lasted a year a handful only of the strongest English dailies would escape bankruptcy. A superficial perusal of the London Times and the Manchester Guardian is sufficient to convince anybody that this is not a wild prophecy. The cessation of certain lines of advertising is complete; the loss as compared with conditions a year ago is staggering.
It is reliably reported in newspaper circles that the London Times' advertising revenue from America alone dropped $10,000 in a single month. Already some of the weaker British publications have begun to go down. One important church publication, laboriously built up, has had to curtail its appearance, and a reform organ, just reaching the point where it could show a satisfactory balance sheet, has been wiped out. When one picks up a London evening newspaper like the Westminster Gazette and sees the almost total dearth of advertising, it is easy to forsee plenty of journalistic wrecks along the Strand unless there are sufficient rich men found to foot the deficit for personal or political reasons.
In this country, too, the war has had a grave effect upon newspaper advertising income. All financial and steamship advertising has practically ceased. Publishers find a market chiefly for war books and are advertising less than usual. And so it goes. The three strongest advertising mediums in New York lost, between August 1 and December 1, 1,089, 1,488, and 2,926 columns of advertising, respectively, as contrasted with their showing for the same months in 1913. If we assume, very conservatively, that they usually receive on an average of $8o a column, this represents a falling off in income Of $87,120, $115,840, and $234,000, respectively.
When to this are added the enormously increased costs due to the gathering of war news, even the layman can understand why it is that newspapers are reducing the number of their reporters and editors, cutting off all special domestic despatches, and striving in every way to decrease expenses. If this results in cutting out some unnecessary waste and the devising of more economical methods, the gain is none the less comparatively slight. The reader can appreciate in short, why it is that from the point of view of their own exchequer newspapers ought to be the chief advocates of peace. i It is quite possible - even a journalist must admit - that if a number of newspaper wrecks should occur with a resultant decrease in our journalistic output, the thinking American public might regard this not as one of the horrors but as one of the pitifully few blessings that come out of such a horrible strife as we are now witnessing. The trouble is, as the English experience has shown, that some valuable journals of small means may go down, while richer and less desirable survive.
If we turn from the embattled counting rooms to the editorial departments, we find the editors also grappling with war problems of the utmost difficulty, intensified by the fact that the great bulk of the war news must come through London and is subjected to British censorship. London has always been, besides the greatest financial mart, the world's chief exchange and clearinghouse for news. When, therefore, the British cut the German cables to this country they took a step which has done much to intensify the bitter feeling against Great Britain that now pervades all Germany to such an extent as to leave comparatively little room for animosity against the other Allies.
If the Germans are manifestly wrong in attributing to the cutting of the cables their failure to win American public opinion to their side, they undeniably have a just grievance against the British censor and so has the American press. To those conversant with the facts as to the stupidity, the one-sidedness, and the political bent of the British censorship, this war has given a severe shock; it will be hard for them to believe again in the good sportsmanship of Englishmen.
The London censorship has been a disgrace to England primarily because of its folly. Thus, dozens of German official despatches were not permitted to pass over the cables, although they were being received in New York by wireless via Sayville at the same time. As if there were no mails from Italy, the London censor suppressed the late Pope's call to Catholics to pray for peace, on the ground, so it is believed in some quarters, that it would not be to England's advantage for the United States, being a great Catholic country, to pray for peace!
Another stupid half-pay colonel twice gave out important news items to the Central News or the Hearst News service, because, he said, they served only a few newspapers, perhaps fifty, and denied it to the Associated Press because it supplied news to 900 newspapers! Not content with suppression, these same half-pay colonels next edited an important utterance by President Poincaré, of France, changing it to suit their taste because they did not like some of the things he said and did not wish the English public to know them. This was a typical case, but by no means the only one of alteration of despatches.
The censors have not stopped there, however; they have censored or suppressed their own Prime Minister's speeches and those of the Foreign Minister on the ground that they would create an unfavorable impression abroad. They have laid heavy hands on the King's messages to India and the Dominions, and even the outgivings of their own press bureau.
Although Winston Churchill solemnly promised at the beginning of the war that every naval loss would be promptly reported to the House of Commons, the sinking of the Audacious was carefully suppressed both at home and abroad. They have so completely concealed all news of the military movements and progress that at the censors' doors are laid the responsibility for the slump in recruiting which so frightened the British Ministry until the story of the gallant retreat of Sir John French's army was made known through the publication of the narrative of the eloquent official reporter, Col. E. D. Swinton. It is generally believed in newspaper circles that the responsibility for this rigid censorship rests with Lord Kitchener, whose dislike for correspondents is notorious. The late Lord Roberts, on the other hand, was much more favorably disposed; indeed, he owed not a little of his great reputation with the English public to such brilliant correspondents as Archibald Forbes and Bennet Burleigh. No one could accuse men of this type of doing mischief. Besides keeping the British informed of the progress of their various small wars, they more than once enriched literature.
With the suppression of the news of military movements there can be no quarrel; the concealment of the news of the loss of a ship is, of course, legitimate from the military point of view. Indeed, with an efficient military censorship no one can justly find fault.
But what the American press is complaining about is that the British censorship is turning from a military into a political one. American journalists have the right to assert that it is beyond the functions of a foreign censor to say whether Americans shall or shall not receive news of a Papal letter; whether they shall be given a falsified account of a speech by the President of France, and whether there is any news from Germany which British censors have a right to suppress. Wars are not won this way, particularly when the mails are open and German letters and newspapers arrive with amazing regularity by way of Holland and Italy.
The favorable opinion of the United States is being courted as never before in its history, but that public opinion is not to be won by falsifications on either side. And there have been misrepresentations on the German side, too. Indeed, if the Associated Press had carried out a recent plan to expose at length the London suppression and mishandling of the news, public sentiment as to England in this country would have been unfavorably affected to a considerable extent.
The difficulties of the situation are, if anything, intensified by the semi-official character of at least two of the foreign agencies, the Agence Havas and the Wolff Agency. Reuter's, with headquarters in London, is responsible for the news of all of the great English over-sea dominions, except Canada, and for Great Britain as well. The Havas Agency, with headquarters in Paris, is responsible for the Latin countries, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Switzerland. The Wolff Bureau covers, in peace times, Germany, Austria, Turkey in Europe, Russia, the Balkan States, Scandinavia, and the German colonies. All of them work in cooperation with the officials from whom they draw their governmental and political news, even Reuter being subject to pressure from them. It is easy to understand the difficulties that this creates for the Associated Press, which stands aloof from all officialdom, and it makes it the more difficult to obtain news for the United States during this conflict which is unbiased and uncolored.
Plainly, there are two markedly different theories as to the reporting of military operations-that which controlled in our Civil War and the modern policy of having, if possible, no correspondent within a hundred miles of the front. From 1861 to 1865 correspondents accompanied our armies and were free not only to describe battles and marches, but to criticize operations, generals, and admirals. That much harm resulted from this is indisputable. Military information of value was gathered by both sides through the exchange of newspapers at the picketlines. But the chief injury done, some think, was through the criticism of plans of campaigns and of generals, and the rousing thereby of animosities within the armies and the starting up of political movements or of unwise public demands for action or non-action.
By contrast the extreme military view to-day is that nothing shall appear save a brief daily official despatch. This is the case in Germany today. Even there, however, military experts may interpret these despatches to the public after approval of the censorship, and certain selected correspondents have been allowed to do descriptive writing in the rear of the armies. Criticism is, of course, forbidden, as is to be expected in an autocracy. At first the company of foreign correspondents, like that of foreign military observers, was everywhere declined with thanks. Now, however, they are being welcomed in some degree; indeed, the charges of misconduct by German soldiers and of unnecessary harshness in waging war have apparently made the Germans regret that they did not from the first ask a number of correspondents from neutral lands to accompany their armies. At least they have used to the fullest extent the favorable reports of Messrs. Irvin Cobb, John T. McCutcheon, and the other American reporters who fell into their hands in Belgium.
The writer's father, who reported the operations of the Federal armies and fleets from the first battle of Bull Run through the Wilderness campaign, and reached Austria in 1866, in time to describe the wreck of the Austrian armies and the aftermath of the Prussian success, was fond of saying that were he a general he would allow no correspondents at the front. The mischief his own fraternity did in 1861-65 seemed to him to outweigh the good. But in a republic, at least, there are other conditions to be considered than the purely military.
The public cannot be left in all but total ignorance of a campaign; it must be informed in some detail as to what is going on if the war spirit is to be kept up, and, since it may be called upon to change its rulers in the middle of a war, as it had to choose between Lincoln and McClellan in 1864, it is entitled to the true facts upon which to form its judgment. Again, if the good opinion of the rest of the neutral world is desired, something more than official despatches is needed to win it: certainly all the German official bulletins thus far issued have not overcome the unfavorable judgments caused by non-official reports of the happenings in Belgium. On the other hand, even in war-time there is genuine danger in giving to military men complete control of a situation.
Besides the present illustration of this in England, we had a perfect example of it during our early warfare in the Philippines. There was an ideal situation for the working of a military censorship; there was but one cable and no correspondent could penetrate into the interior save with an army column.
The net result was not creditable to those in charge; the censorship, to say the least, was partisan. It speedily became political. Nothing unfavorable to the contentions of the McKinley government was allowed to come out. Constant charges that Mr. Bryan's speeches were encouraging the Filipinos were cabled, as well as other reflections upon Democrats and Democratic policies. Just as the censors today, whether they be in London, Paris, or Petrograd, conceal all bad news or gloss over defeats with euphemisms, only good news came out of Manila. So frankly political, so intolerable did this censorship become, that some influential journalists called upon the Secretary of War and were successful by threat of exposure in bringing about a change, not, however, until the American public had received an erroneous impression as to what was going on in the archipelago. It is needless to say that no news of the soldier wrong-doing in the Philippines, such as the use of the abominably inhuman water-cure, to which a stop was finally put by a vigorous order by President Roosevelt, could get by the censor. In this case the army needed to be saved by publicity from the effects of its own wrongdoing.
This is nothing more than saying that frail human nature, even at its best, suffers when given arbitrary power over others, particularly if those whom it controls are objects of race prejudice, or of national hatreds. If the press is necessary in peace times in every country, republic or absolute monarchy, to prevent the abuse of power by those holding office, it is in the long run equally necessary that it should have some voice in war-time to present all the vital facts and to reflect to the commanding generals the temper of the people whose battles they are fighting. We come perilously close to despotism when a few men, whatever the emergency, concentrate all power in their own hands, and then by an impenetrable cloak of silence effectively veil their actions. What may happen in those circumstances is forever on record in the history of the fall of the French Government in 1870 and of the Commune, which quite naturally followed the German victories and the exposure of the campaign of lies and misinformation with which the military men of Napoleon III deluded the people.
It would seem, therefore, as if a well controlled system of field correspondents were necessary; indeed, the amount of news sent in by special representatives of American newspapers shows that, despite European military autocrats, the American reporter has been able to get to the front and to mail uncensored stories to this country to delight his managing editor. The writer is inclined to believe, as already indicated, that as the war progresses the restrictions will be loosened rather than tightened, as they have been in Germany; that the military leaders will feel the need of the moral support that comes from an enlightened and intelligent public opinion; that they will realize that the only basis for genuine mutual confidence between the military and the public is absolute truth-telling, whether it be favorable or unfavorable, by those who control the news; the public and army are interwoven in their best interests.
A powerful factor in bringing about this change should be a realization of how the several belligerent countries are being hurt by the false information, the cruel and misleading rumors that appear about them abroad, which can, in the long run, best be overcome by full and frank statements, both from official and unofficial sources. That any censorship will ever work to complete satisfaction may well be doubted, since it is at best founded on suppression, deceit, and concealment, however justifiable that may be in war-time.
From the viewpoint of humanity one may well ask, too, whether the censorship in war-times does not work against the coming of universal peace. How may we best rouse the moral sentiment of the world against war? Surely not by suppressing the horrors of the battlefield by failing to portray to people everywhere the wickedness of taking human life on a grand scale.
American journalists, it would seem, cannot have any more patriotic duty in this hour than to portray truthfully the breakdown of militarism as taught and practiced by the nations of Europe.
- German journalists roughing it up by the front-lines.
- From a Belgian magazine under German censorship : 'l'Evenment'
