Pen and Sword: American War Correspondents, 1898-1975

Introduction

1 Introduction In the war in Iraq, many journalists are described as embedded . Being embedded means news reporters are attached to military units engaged in armed conflict. This is not a new development in the history of American war correspondence. In every war discussed in this book (from 1898 through Vietnam) reporters accompanied soldiers into battle. The term “embedded” was first used during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, largely because the military was responding to pressure from news organizations that had had only limited access in the 1999 conflicts. Furthermore , in every war save the one in Cuba against Spain, journalists signed agreements to qualify for accreditation. The term “embedded” provoked criticism, largely by armchair pundits , of the arrangements worked out between the military and the news media because critics thought such arrangements amounted to a propaganda campaign.1 There are many good reasons to embed journalists. Chief of them is survival. Of the 123 reporters killed in Iraq at this writing , only seven were embedded. It is true some reporters sent a few pieces of inaccurate information—but that has occurred in every war studied here. There is no perfect information universe. Journalists bring their own supplies to the front. What they don’t bring is paid for by their news organizations. Of course, journalists depend on the military for transportation to areas of battle and use of transmission lines to send their stories home. But where else would you want to report the war other than alongside the soldier? Being embedded gives journalists a front row seat and makes it possible for them to be the walking advertisement of the nation-state. 2 pen and sword The view that journalists are puppets of the military is insulting to the intelligence of news reporters, and it is unmindful of the history and practices of modern American war correspondence. This book provides an introduction to this important aspect of journalism in the United States: the history and development of modern war correspondence. It is a synoptic account in the sense that the text situates its subject within the history of Western civilization as well as the history of modern warfare . It also provides an account of the war reporter and his search for meaning in a landscape where annihilation is a daily reality and where his very existence is put on the line.2 It takes a great deal of courage to be a war reporter and an acute intelligence to find the words to convey his experience to his public. In the following chapters I place American war correspondence in the larger panorama of the history of the printed press because doing so allows us to understand journalism in a much broader way than if we simply recounted the facts of the matter. That is, the institution of the press developed as a source of organized dissent and it is in dissent that the modern practices of censorship have their origins. The ties between journalism and the state rest historically, then, in organized dissent, the hallmark of modernity and the reason why nationstates were formed. During war, the journalist’s role in the life of the nation becomes more explicit than his role in peacetime. At the same time, censorship also becomes more explicit. I found such patterns of explicit censorship in archival records revealing of, among other things, the relationship between the First Amendment and other amendments to the Constitution of the United States—especially the Fourth Amendment . During war journalists often invoke the Fourth Amendment when their freedom to report on the war is being curtailed. The period of time covered here stretches from 1898 through the Vietnam era. As such it showcases the evolution of the war correspondent from the beau ideal of the Spanish-Cuban-American War to the kind of postmodern war correspondent that emerged in Vietnam. This evolution must be understood if we are to understand the current war correspondent in the Middle East wars. One cannot speak about war correspondents without speaking about the First Amendment. I have tried to avoid the pieties resorted to from time to time, the kind found in movies where a CIA officer aware of rogue agents chooses to go to the New York Times with his story rather than to his superiors or to Congress. This portrayal of the free press often raises the First Amendment to the level of a sacrament. A sacrament bestows grace. It is sacred; it dwells in the...