Censorship In The American Press In World War Ii And The Code Of Wartime Practices

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, grade: 1,3, University of Siegen, course: Censorship - Concept & Case Studies, 12 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: On June 25th, 1943, American press editors received a confidential note, the contents an purpose of which was hard to understand even for those who were familiar with the technical terms. It said: " ...] you are asked not to publish or broadcast any information whatever regarding war experiments involving: Production or utilization of atom smashing, atomic energy, atomic fission, atomic splitting, or any of their equivalents. The use for military purposes of radium or radioactive materials, heavy water, high voltage discharge equipment, cyclotrons. The following elements or any of their compounds: polonium, uranium, ytterbium, hafnium, protactinium, radium, rhenium, thorium, deuterium." What sounded "like Greek" to the selected adressees of the request, in retrospective can be identified even by an amateur as the attempt to hide evidence that the US government was doing research on a nuclear device. It was about to play a decisive role in the ending of the Pacific War. Since the United States' entry in World War II, domestic censorship had to draw a line very carefully: On the one hand, the First Amendment to the Constitution grands the freedom of speech and the press; on the other hand, sensitive information, if revealed to the public, could fall into the hands of enemy agents. To handle this task, the government set in effect a voluntary censorship, building up on every journalist's patriotic instinct not to publish anything that might be a threat to the war effort. How was censorship organized? What kind of information was censored? Is there an actual difference between voluntary and mandatory censorship? These are questions the following research paper will elaborate on. A brief overview of the practices

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, grade: 1,3, University of Siegen, course: Censorship - Concept & Case Studies, language: English, abstract: On June 25th, 1943, American press editors received a confidential note, the contents an purpose of which was hard to understand even for those who were familiar with the technical terms. It said: “[...] you are asked not to publish or broadcast any information whatever regarding war experiments involving: Production or utilization of atom smashing, atomic energy, atomic fission, atomic splitting, or any of their equivalents. The use for military purposes of radium or radioactive materials, heavy water, high voltage discharge equipment, cyclotrons. The following elements or any of their compounds: polonium, uranium, ytterbium, hafnium, protactinium, radium, rhenium, thorium, deuterium.” What sounded “like Greek” to the selected adressees of the request, in retrospective can be identified even by an amateur as the attempt to hide evidence that the US government was doing research on a nuclear device. It was about to play a decisive role in the ending of the Pacific War. Since the United States' entry in World War II, domestic censorship had to draw a line very carefully: On the one hand, the First Amendment to the Constitution grands the freedom of speech and the press; on the other hand, sensitive information, if revealed to the public, could fall into the hands of enemy agents. To handle this task, the government set in effect a voluntary censorship, building up on every journalist's patriotic instinct not to publish anything that might be a threat to the war effort. How was censorship organized? What kind of information was censored? Is there an actual difference between voluntary and mandatory censorship? These are questions the following research paper will elaborate on. A brief overview of the practices of censorship in times of war will accompany the analysis. Finally, the text makes an attempt to answer the question how the United States “survived” the censorship period and how it affected further censorship strategies. An important source for this paper is the book “Secrets of Victory. The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II” by Michael S. Sweeney, that has been published in 2001. Censorship of the press during war is common to many countries and has been used for strategic ends in many periods of time. A characteristic for modern wars in particular is a “difference of interest”, with journalists torn between their task to report “as truthfully as possible” and a responsibility not to help the enemy.

During World War II, the civilian Office of Censorship supervised a huge and surprisingly successful program of news management: the voluntary self-censorship of the American press. In January 1942, censorship codebooks were distributed to all American newspapers, magazines, and radio stations with the request that journalists adhere to the guidelines within. Remarkably, over the course of the war no print journalist, and only one radio journalist, ever deliberately violated the censorship code after having been made aware of it and understanding its intent. Secrets of Victory examines the World War II censorship program and analyzes the reasons for its success. Using archival sources, including the Office of Censorship's own records, Michael Sweeney traces the development of news media censorship from a pressing necessity after the attack on Pearl Harbor to the centralized yet efficient bureaucracy that persuaded thousands of journalists to censor themselves for the sake of national security. At the heart of this often dramatic story is the Office of Censorship's director Byron Price. A former reporter himself, Price relied on cooperation with--rather than coercion of--American journalists in his fight to safeguard the nation's secrets.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject History - America, grade: 66points > 1,9, University of Warwick (Dept. of History), course: North America: Themes and Problems, language: English, abstract: “The war came as a great relief, like a reverse earthquake, that in one terrible jerk shook everything disjointed, distorted, askew back into place. Japanese bombs had finally brought national unity to the U.S.”. All nations participating in the Second World War used one or another strategy to commit their countries to war. Government-conducted manipulation of informing a people can be differentiated into an active channel, propaganda, and a non-active one, censorship. Even though, propaganda and censorship usually cohere, this essay shall only throw a light on how US-American censorship shaped the average citizen’s perception before, while, and after World War II.