Like all news reporters, what you heard from them was told from a viewpoint they represented, and like today, if people wanted to decide where the absolute truth lay, they got the story from several sources and made their own decision...Such was not always possible with the media limitations of the last century, so the majority of news seekers let trusted reporters do it for them...
Shirer, as an example, understood several European tongues, and read many foreign newspapers every day, listened to the speeches of European politicians, then talked to people in the streets, taverns and restaurants for their thoughts before assembling his own words for broadcast or print...He was adept at listening for talk not meant for broadcast, even knowing of the French capitulation to Nazi Germany hours before it was known in Berlin...
Shirer watched dumbfounded as adoring crowds willingly accepted Adolf Hitler as their guide to success and prosperity without even questioning his history of failure as a politician or as a leader of anything requiring serious thought...To be more exact, those who questioned Hitler's qualifications weren't present long enough for discussion before they were taken away for expulsion, internment, imprisonment, unexplained disappearance or outright execution...All that were allowed were those with empty souls, willing hands and painted smiles...
Shirer gained a reputation for getting the truth out in such a way that even the suspicious Nazis building a dossier against him couldn't gather enough solid evidence to prosecute a case without raising international ire...But even Shirer knew when to take it on the lam, leaving Germany, and eventually occupied Europe before the noose tightened...Before he left, he may have been the most knowledgeable newsman in the free world concerning the iron fist Hitler held around the formerly free Europe, making him one of the most sought after speakers and writers in the world on the subject of the impending war...
Following the hard fought peace, his knowledge of pre-war Germany was invaluable to his readers and listeners in his coverage of war crimes trials at Nuremberg as he was able to compare testimony with everyday events he had seen with his own eyes...He further parlayed his advantage into much deserved praise for his monumental work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, previously reviewed here...In this account he let fly all the personal observations he had held back in his pre-war reporting without letting it impinge on the accuracy of his retelling...
In the decades before the proliferation of television, and later internet sourced news, regular moviegoers saw and heard the latest updates from Universal Newsreels, Pathé News, The March of Time and other newsreel services along with a cartoon and a short subject presentation before the featured films began...One of the names of the commentators most familiar to me was Ed Herlihy...Although I remember him most as an announcer on TV shows to which my young eyes were glued, he brought news of the war to theatergoers every week as the voice of Universal Newsreels...
Members of the American home front heard his voice accompanying news footage from the battlegrounds as the war's events unfolded...His commentary made the experiences real for the audiences...His career as an announcer not only on newsreels, but radio and TV programming can still be heard in YouTube preservations...
A voice which stood out for decades in the minds of radio and television audiences was that of the calm, trusted Edward R. Murrow...Murrow practically invented the network news broadcast after joining William S. Paley's CBS Radio in 1935...Paley faced the giant NBC, with its Red and Blue networks which had the most popular entertainers of the day under exclusive contract, forcing Paley to offer alternative listening choices to gain an audience...
Correctly guessing that listeners wanted the latest news information in order to keep pace with their ever-changing world, in addition to the entertainment provided by NBC to temporarily escape the real world, Paley gave Murrow the assignment to bring listeners to CBS by providing up-to-the-minute news from around the world before they could read it in tomorrow's newspapers...Since the biggest event in world history was unfolding in Europe at that time, Murrow went to Europe to break ground for his fledgling organization...
His first break came as William Shirer got word to him that the Anschluss was occurring in Austria, and Shirer had no outlet for his exclusive account of the breaking story...Murrow immediately arranged transportation for Shirer to London where he could broadcast his uncensored narrative for a worldwide audience...Chartering the only aircraft available, Murrow flew to Vienna to fill in for Shirer as he made broadcast history...
Shirer was the first conscript in the formation of what became known as Murrow's Boys, a team of independent journalists banded together to broadcast under the CBS flag to a waiting world...In Vienna, before his first-ever broadcast of a news event, Murrow added other commentators familiar with the European political scene, the gathering of which on one broadcast, marked the inception of team news analysis...
Even though Murrow and Shirer later terminated their association for reasons still in dispute, each resumed a successful career with Murrow staying with CBS, the network he put on the map, for his entire career...In 1990 Shirer finally revealed his version of the parting of their ways, 25 years too late for Murrow to contradict...Shirer said the conflict stemmed from his criticism of the Truman Doctrine, and the refusal of the network and sponsor to back him up...
Modern TV news junkies, accustomed to front line war news brought into their homes by "embedded journalists," owe that concept to wartime reporters like Ernie Pyle, who covered WWII battles from the same foxholes and entrenchments where the combat originated...Combat Correspondent and Combat Photographer are both military specialties performed by trained Armed Forces members who contribute to press releases distributed by military public affairs offices and to DoD organs such as the Stars & Stripes...
Ernie Pyle was a different breed who wrote his columns as a civilian from wherever the battles took place, and always from the viewpoint of the enlisted man who had survived that long by seeing to it the enemy did not...He knew the "big picture" was reported to the public daily by correspondents typing their stories from safer locations; he preferred to tell the common soldier's viewpoint from their own perspectives...
Pyle was accepted and respected by combat units he joined even though he was unarmed while assigned to small units as they fought in North Africa, Italy and from the Normandy beaches to the liberation of France...He suffered through his own emotional injuries of battle while struggling with marital difficulties with his alcoholic wife at home...He even gained combat pay for infantrymen by lobbying Congress from his typewriter...
After moving to the Pacific Theater, Pyle ran afoul of the Navy by butting heads against their regulations and writing unflattering columns in his inimitable style...He was killed by enemy fire during his coverage of the Battle of Okinawa, and was buried there with honors, being later reinterred at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii...
War correspondence was by no means limited to the Allied forces, or even to belligerent nations...Nazi Germany employed reporters such as Kurt Eggers, who covered the war from the front for Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry...Heinz Konsalik used his experiences as a war correspondent to write novels after the war from the German soldier's viewpoint...Tokyo Rose was not one person, but several given the name by American GI's who listened to the nightly radio broadcasts for the music which was interspersed with Japanese propaganda urging soldiers, sailors and Marines to leave the war and go home...
Even supposedly neutral nations such as the republic of Ireland, which was by some accounts only a thinly veiled Nazi collaborationist, used its freely traveling diplomats to send reports home, doctored versions of which gained publication...Other "neutral" reporters in Switzerland and Sweden were forced to walk a thin line in their stories to avoid seeming in favor of one side or another...
It should be remembered that, in war or peace, reporters report not only what they see and hear, but what they think they see and hear...What is finally presented to the public is likely a version of what the editors and producers think the public should see and hear...
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