Witness To War -- Overview

Witness to War

A seven part series of one-hour programs about

the historic role of War Reporting

 

            Their dispatches have whipped up patriotic fervor, brought down governments, stopped wars, and soothed worried mothers. Their exploits have made best selling memoirs, reshaped history, and spawned epic films.

            From William Howard Russell in Crimea to Matthew Brady at Bull Run, and Ernie Pyle at Monte Casino to Peter Arnett in Baghdad, the war correspondent has always been a mythical, courageous figure who shines the light where the military censors demand darkness.

            But the behavior of the press in wartime has not always been that simple or even admirable.

            Many war correspondents have come away from the front tarnished by their failings, wounded by their capitulations to the military, and pummeled by the irreconcilable and diametrically opposed purposes and missions of the press and the military.

            The role of the press has always been to disclose, while that of the military is unencumbered secrecy in order to surprise its enemy and win.

            But armies have also used secrecy and censorship to cover up the incompetence of commanders, miscalculations that led to failed missions, pillage, murder and erroneous intelligence that caused catastrophic foreign policy decisions.

            The press has been just as heavy-handed.

            In one classic example, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst bullied Congress into starting the Spanish American War largely to fill his papers with sensational exclusive stories, and outsell his rival, Joseph Pulitzer.

            Sculptor and artist Frederic Remington, whom Hearst hired to sketch the war for the New York Journal, wired from Cuba: "EVERYTHING IS QUIET.  THERE IS NO TROUBLE HERE.  THERE WILL BE NO WAR.  I WISH TO RETURN."  Hearst cabled back: "PLEASE REMAIN.  YOU FURNISH PICTURES.  I WILL FURNISH WAR."

            Hearst got his war, and he and other newspapers owners grew rich as readers snapped up copies with the latest news from the front.  As their editors pushed for more war news to feed the public, the inherent conflict between the reporters and the military was often rubbed raw.

            "Witness to War" probes the development of this struggle.  We will see the images of war, from Matthew Brady's Civil War photographs to today's live satellite reports beamed from the front and hear the accounts of the battles written by some of the world's most famous correspondents and authors.

            We will come to know these fascinating war correspondents by bringing their dispatches to life as we explore this no-man's land "between the bullet and the lie" as George Orwell described it, where truth is the first casualty.