Sometimes it is good to reflect. The text below was written almost 15
years ago by a Canadian one-time war correspondent, Charles Lynch. He is
highly regarded in Canada, and his columns are the kinds of goodies that
you can read and then reread. This one was written upon the occasion of
a get-together with American journalists at a retreat in the Midwest, which
happened at a time of one of those small "funny" wars - the Falklands
War in Argentina.
Consider also, please, the jolly nature of these writers' recollections
of their duties during World War II, and reflect what they might have meant
for people bombed into the stone age - a time when I was a small child and
saw these airplanes stream across the sky as though in black in conveyor
belts:
Titled "Truth is victim in war and peace," Charles Lynch had this
to say:
"A few of us old war correspondents (we call ourselves "a flush of old "W.C's") have gathered in Colorado Springs this weekend to talk about wars past, present and future, and to argue about the dividing line between journalism and propaganda.
This year, some of our American colleagues are joining in, for this is the headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command, the focal point of our partnership where Canadians and Americans treat one another as equals and where, on occasion, American forces respond to Canadian commands.
To the military, there is no dividing line between honest news and propaganda in time of war, and the only kind of journalism that we in Canada tolerated in the Second World War was propaganda, on the home front or from the fields of combat."
Now here we have an honest statement. That's how it's done in war. But
how about in peacetime?
Writes Lynch:
"Even in peacetime, governments savor propaganda much more readily than they do the practice of journalism, and every one of the seven Canadian prime ministers I have known has yearned for a captive press, and has blamed our free press for his troubles and failures. . . .
To former war correspondents, it's a familiar cry, and one that is being raised in a military context in Britain today, where the government expects the media to get behind the business of "Argie bashing" and ensure support for the military in the Falkland Island crisis.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wants slanted reporting, in Britain's favor, and she has suggested that objective reporting borders on treason.
In other words, she would like to see all British media become propaganda arms of the government, the way all of us were incorporated into the total war of 1939-45. . . .
Freedom of information is not a popular idea with any government, conspicuously our own.
The ultimate way for governments to put the lid on is through the imposition of censorship, the kind we had during the Second World War when democracy was suspended and Canada became, in the sense of politics, information of suspension of freedoms, a totalitarian state."
So there you have it. That's how it's done in war. That's how it was
in Germany, in Russia, in the United States and every other country at war
- then, or since then:
"Those of us who reported that war accepted censorship and became propagandists for the war effort. 'The only good German is a dead German,' said our leaders, and we wrote it.
We have gathered every year since the war to review matters and to argue my latter-day conviction that what we were doing wasn't journalism at all, and that it's much harder to quest for truth in peacetime than it was to report on wartime combat.
We called it total war, and we accepted the dictum of Germany's Joseph Goebbels that total propaganda was required to keep the public onside, turning defeats at Dunkirk and Dieppe into victories, exulting in mass bombings, and taking pride in the casualty lists.
The Germans started the distortions and we matched them, just as we matched them in indiscriminate bombings of cities."
I remember a charred baby - maybe two years old or so - climbing out
of the ashes of a home some two or three hours after the bombing had stopped.
In fact, it climbed out of an open suitcase. I have no idea why it was in
that suitcase to begin with. I remember taking my jacket off and making
a nest for its head. I don't remember anything else - what happened later
to that baby. It seems nobody even looked for it. Not a nice memory.
Lynch then goes on to say, speaking of the Falklands War in Argentina:
Now, people in authority in Britain are telling newspapers and broadcasters the things we were told during the war, and the jingo papers carry headlines of hate about the land of the gauchos, where the bullybeef used to come from that fed British troops in two wars.
Already, there is stiff censorship on the correspondents with the British naval force, and you can't argue with that when the security of the ships depends on secrecy.
But you can argue with the threat of censorship at home in Britain, just as we would fight it if Canada herself were embroiled and our government wanted the official line, and nothing but, backed by an inflamed public opinion.
Remember, we inherited most of our freedoms from Britain, tailor-made. If some of those freedoms die there, you can put them in our loss column, too."
I lived in Argentina for four years. If you had asked the persons in
the streets how they felt about a war with Britain, you would have gotten
a blank stare. I doubt they even knew they owned a piece of land called
Falklands.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war."
(William Randolph Hearst)