another article (in part) on war censorship.. Archived Message
Posted by John Monro on February 25, 2023, 2:20 am, in reply to "War: how state and press kept truth off the front page - the Guardian fearlessly tells it as it is.."
https://www.historyextra.com/period/first-world-war/ww1-journalism-reporting-war-trenches-censorship-philip-gibbs-william-beach-thomas/ It starts, In the days when I was a reporter covering wars for ITN, I often puzzled over this question: if TV news cameras had been present in the trenches during the First World War, would hundreds of thousands of young soldiers’ lives have been saved? If ordinary people back home – on both sides – had seen the slaughter for themselves, would they have cried, “Enough is enough!” and insisted their leaders negotiate immediate peace? The complete article is behind a paywall. I don't know when this BBC history article was published, but we know the answer to this rhetorical question, with Iraq, Syria Vietnam and Ukraine, no, it wouldn't have made any difference to have ITV or the BBC in the trenches in WW1, as their limited and impotent presence in these subsequent wars haven't made any difference at there either. And of course in Ukraine it is only Russians and Ukrainians spilling their guts in the wheat fields and the rubble.
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