War: how state and press kept truth off the front page - the Guardian fearlessly tells it as it is..Archived Message
Posted by John Monro on February 24, 2023, 10:17 pm
....as Roy Greenslade in an article in the Guardian in 2014 refers back to the First World War, a great enough distance in time to absolve the Guardian now rom any self-examination or its fellow publishers and media from doing the same. . I just removed the first two words in the headline "First World" in my own.
You could almost copy and past this article, change a few names, and it'd describe what is happening now, more than a hundred years later. It even mentions the shortage of ammunition.
Then, the Daily Chronicle’s Philip Gibbs , managed to get himself to the front lines. He was caught, and threatened with being shot if he were found there again, before being returned to England. He has the last words in the article.
“We identified ourselves absolutely with the armies in the field. We wiped out of our minds all thought of personal scoops and all temptation to write one word which would make the task of officers and men more difficult or dangerous. There was no need of censorship of our despatches. We were our own censors.”