WAR AND CENSORSHIP

WAR AND CENSORSHIP

It’s an old story, almost as old as the country – the conflict between the military and the press over what can be told and shown in wartime. In his media column today in the New York Times, David Carr reveals how the Defense Department has all but banned photos from the war zone depicting wounded or dead American soldiers. (The new rules don’t explicitly forbid such photos, but they require photographers to obtain written permission in advance from any soldier who might end up hurt or killed. Fat chance. )

As it happens, on this Memorial Day, I am working on the chapter in my book that covers World War II. In that war, when our national survival was at stake, the government went in the opposite direction. At the war’s start, the Roosevelt administration acted on instinct and censored a lot of information, including all photos of dead G.I.s. In 1943, though, after intense lobbying from Life magazine, the Censorship Board reversed its policy and gave permission. The first photo showed several dead Marines lying face down on a beach in New Guinea.

The evidence for the impact of that photo and the ones that followed is sketchy. But among U.S. fighting forces, the new policy certainly had no measurable impact on morale. And among civilians, we know that during the next bond drive (which were a recurring sort of popular referendum on the war, in which citizens were asked to lend the government the money it needed – rather than depend on lenders in China and Japan, as we do to finance this war), sales actually increased.

Of course, there was one difference between the two wars, which may be key: by 1943, we were winning.