THE NEWSPAPER PROBLEM IN ITS BEARING UPON MILITARY SECRECY DURING THE CIVIL WAR
In every modern war the control of the agencies and channels of publicity has presented a serious problem. According to the regulations in use in the present European war, correspondents must keep their distance from the scene of action, and the public must be content with such "hand-picked" news touching military movements as the belligerent governments see fit to issue. The journalistic profession may complain of the curtailment of correspondents' privileges, the occasional suppression of papers, the governmental control of communication, the censorship of casualty lists, the restrictive instructions and regulations of official press bureaus, the exclusion of generals' names from war reports, the lack of definiteness in official communiqués, and the heavy penalties enforced against offending papers. Yet where these safeguards are absent, there is a serious weakening of military effectiveness. When one contemplates the full result of a loose policy toward newspapers during war, the case for some form of news control becomes a convincing one. The American Civil War presents a significant field for study in this connection, for the double reason that a period of remarkably keen journalistic enterprise coincided with a time of laxity in the matter of press control. Acting under no effective governmental restraint, the newspapers of the North, though in many ways deserving of admiration, undoubtedly did the national cause serious injury by continually revealing military information, undermining confidence in the management of public affairs, and giving undue publicity to the virtues of ambitious generals and the sensational features of the war. The present article is offered with the hope that there may now be an element of timeliness in the consideration of the military consequences of newspaper activity during that period.
In dealing with the novel question of censorship and news control enough was done by the Washington authorities to show that they realized the seriousness of the problem. During the gloomy days of April, 1861, the telegraph lines from Washington were brought within the exclusive control of the government, and an extra-legal censorship of a sort was established. The censor, H. E. Thayer, was instructed by Secretary Seward to prevent the issue
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