The Press in the War Zones

To read the newspaper accounts of the raid on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands last week, you'd think the Navy had won a second Battle of Trafalgar. This is not to underestimate the significance of the American stroke, but merely to suggest--green headlines and eight-star editions to the contrary--that, compared to the Jap massacre at Singapore and the forty-day annihilation of France, the disabling of a pair of coaling stations can hardly be considered a major triumph.

Responsibility for the generally overblown reports of Allied successes cannot be laid exclusively to the newspapers. The press need be reminded, perhaps, that the theory of good news selling better than bad news, is dangerous for a country at war. On the other hand, the business of the fourth estate is to give news, and right now what people want to read is War news. Without the full cooperation of the government, however, the press is on the spot; it has to fake column-six stories from one-inch Army or Navy communiques.

Admittedly, bulletins from the war zones must go through an intricate process of sifting before they can be "released for publication"; but whoever is supervising this sifting would do well to imitate the English experiment of omitting pep-lines and telling the public the worst. Confronted by the truth, the British people have remained steadfastly without panic, and without spurious optimism.

The Allied situation in the Far East being what it is--decidedly critical--Herr Goebbels must do plenty of laughing when American papers, under banner spreads, exult over each tiny counterstab by MacArthur or the Dutch fleet. Not so long ago, Goebbels was paying French newspapermen lucratively for the same type of publicity that the American press is now providing free of charge. His point was, on the eve of their conquest, to lull the French public into the false security of a rumored German conflict with Russia.

Instead of cheerful tales about hypothetical Allied coups, the press should tell America exactly where she stands. What was the extent of the damage at Pearl Harbor? If the Pacific Fleet was not hopelessly crippled, why do the Japs continuously control the seas around the Malay Peninsula and Philippines? And if the newspapers are unable to secure this information, we should certainly hear about it from the editorial pages. Unfounded complacency is a fatal substitute for fact.