Journalism Through Wartime

 By Chloe Brussard

The relationship between war and the media has always been a complicated one. They are maybe two of the most different things in the world -- war is about conflict, power, violence and winning. Media, supposedly, is about facts, honesty, and informing the public. But what they do have in common, is that they both rally nations. 

Despite its devastation and terrible casualties, war is a huge reason why people would buy newspapers. People wanted to know what's going on because war isn't something that is foreign and far away. It can directly affect people all over the country.

This can rally the people of the nation and push them to join the army or serve their country in other ways, but it also is one of the main reasons for division in the United States. 

You can look at any war and see this, both in the past and also currently. Looking back at World War II, you can see some similarities in the way that the war was promoted compared to today.

The main purpose for propaganda, no matter during what time period, is to "persuade the dominant group." Depending on what the stance on war the journalist has depends on what they're trying to persuade their audience. 

An anti-war journalist is not going to produce the same content as a pro-war journalist. One would send out passive messages using facts or reason to try and convince their audience that war is not the way to solve conflict like this. The other would use emotion and try to antagonize their audience to get them to take action.

World War II was a perilous time. A war among the countries of the world was happening again, after World War I had been coined "The Great War". The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 had just occurred, and Hollywood was eating it up.

What followed was a great deal of B list movies exploiting the situation in the Pacific and making complete villains out of the Japanese for their devastating and "unprovoked" attack on Pearl Harbor. This stirred up the United States citizens, and helped rally them into defending their country and fighting against the Japanese. 

That is one example of propaganda in World War II. The goal of propaganda is that their "motive should be concealed" and that is exactly what Hollywood did. They continued to do this in each conflict the United States have taken part in. 

The US government and media doesn't want their citizens thinking that what they are doing is wrong, so they show the people select things that makes the US look like a positive force in their peoples eyes. 

Since the war wasn't going on directly in the United States, what the media produced, through radio, or television, or movies, or newspapers was the information that they received from outside the country. "Feature films were perhaps the single most important channel for the dissemination of American propaganda throughout the Second World War". If you want something to be heard by many people, putting it on a huge marquis and screen is definitely one way of doing that. 

US propaganda was put anywhere it could. Factory and school windows, in schools, and all over streets. A poster was created that depicts a monster with two heads (Nazi and Japanese) clutching the Statue of Liberty in one hand and fighting off American advances with the other. Any way to make their enemy look bad and themselves look good, they did.

Although the United States was feeding their people propaganda without them overtly noticing, we cannot forget about the propaganda opposing countries were feeding their people. Germany is a major one, for example. 

German media consisted of the superiority of the German army, and contrasted it with the British and Allied armies who were shown as cowards, butchers, and severely misguided. The Russians were shown as dehumanized beasts and killers who did not fear death.

To try and counteract the negative media that the British were receiving during the war, they created a plan to reach the German people. The British Broadcasting Company created foreign language broadcasts which ended up being a key element to the Allied campaign.

The British Political Warfare Executive (P.W.E) was also able to deliver covert messages to the German people through "black propaganda" (a form of propaganda that tries to discredit propaganda made against them by their opponents), and printed postcards and leaflets dropped behind enemy lines. 

However anyone decides to see this war, there is no denying the fact that insane propaganda was used in media coverage, by both sides of the war. There is also no denying the fact that it wasn't just Germans and the Japanese.

The United States is not completely innocent in this whole ordeal. Us, the British, and the Allied forces all used propaganda as a weapon in this war and that needs to be recognized. The whole point of propaganda is to make the viewer feel strong. nationalism towards their country, and if the Allied forces were able to do that and people still believe that what was done is correct, then they did their job. 

But just because they were fed all this negative media doesn't mean that we can't acknowledge its existence. Journalism is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, form of non-violent fighting in the world to me. Media has the ability to reach millions of people and sway them into making decisions. It's just facts. 

But in a day and age now when journalism is so divided, I think it's more important now than ever to keep digging for the truth, and to let the people see the truth so they can make decisions with all the facts. It's not fair to keep feeding them half truths. Journalism can sway people, but it is up to them to decide what they truly want. 

"The best propaganda is the silent murder of the opposition of news"

- Joseph Goebbels