Censorship in the American Press in World War II and the 'Code of Wartime Practices'

Censorship in the American Press in World War II and the 'Code of Wartime Practices' PDF Author: Ludwig Andert
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638932788
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
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

Censorship in the american press in World War II and the 'Code of Wartime Practices'

Censorship in the american press in World War II and the 'Code of Wartime Practices' PDF Author: Ludwig Andert
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638034208
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
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.

Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press

Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press PDF Author: United States. Office of Censorship
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Press
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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Secrets of Victory

Secrets of Victory PDF Author: Michael S. Sweeney
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807875600
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
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.

Code of Wartime Practices for American Broadcasters

Code of Wartime Practices for American Broadcasters PDF Author: United States. Office of Censorship
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Radio broadcasting
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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Code of Wartime Practices for American Broadcasters

Code of Wartime Practices for American Broadcasters PDF Author: United States. Censorship Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Radio
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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The Basis and Operation of Wartime Censorship in the United States

The Basis and Operation of Wartime Censorship in the United States PDF Author: Edward Newell Doan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 732

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Wartime Censorship of Press and Radio

Wartime Censorship of Press and Radio PDF Author: Robert Edward Summers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Censorship
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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The Impact of Censorship During World War II on the Average American

The Impact of Censorship During World War II on the Average American PDF Author: Cordula Zwanzig
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656583358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
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.

The Censored War

The Censored War PDF Author: George H. Roeder
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300062915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Early in World War II censors placed all photographs of dead and badly wounded Americans in a secret Pentagon file known to officials as the Chamber of Horrors. Later, as government leaders became concerned about public complacency brought on by Allied victories, they released some of these photographs of war's brutality. But to the war's end and after, they continued to censor photographs of mutilated or emotionally distressed American soldiers, of racial conflicts at American bases, and other visual evidence of disunity or disorder. In this book George H. Roeder, Jr., tells the intriguing story of how American opinions about World War II were manipulated both by the wartime images that citizens were allowed to see and by the images that were suppressed. His text is amplified by arresting visual essays that include many previously unpublished photographs from the army's censored files. Examining news photographs, movies, newsreels, posters, and advertisements, Roeder explores the different ways that civilian and military leaders used visual imagery to control the nation's perception of the war and to understate the war's complexities. He reveals how image makers tried to give minorities a sense of equal participation in the war while not alarming others who clung to the traditions of separate races, classes, and gender roles. He argues that the most pervasive feature of wartime visual imagery was its polarized depiction of the world as good or bad, and he discusses individuals--Margaret Bourke-White, Bill Mauldin, Elmer Davis, and others--who fought against these limitations. He shows that the polarized ways of viewing encouraged by World War II influenced American responses to political issues for decades to follow, particularly in the simplistic way that the Vietnam War was depicted by both official and antiwar forces.