Reporting From The Front War Reporters During The Great War Brian Best by Brian Best 9781473821170, 1473821177 instant download after payment.

When the war was declared in August 1914, one of the first acts to be
implemented by the politicians and military was a strict censorship on
the newspapers. As the poacher turned gamekeeper, Winston Churchill
said: The war is going to be fought in a fog and the best place for
correspondence about the war is London, The military sought to have one
of their officers, dubbed “Eyewitness”, to be the official spokesman to
enable them to control what the newspapers could print. In the early
stages of the war, there were many reporters on the Continent who were
evading military arrest and sending back reports about the reality of
the situation. Several volunteered with the various ambulance services
just to disguise their real purpose, but all were eventually banished.
Having finally cleared all reporters from fighting area, the military
was persuaded to allow a small number of accredited war reporters to be
chaperoned around the battle fronts. They were closely watched and their
reports thoroughly scrutinised, until they eventually became almost a
part of the Headquarters hierarchy. Later, diaries and letters revealed
how many of them really felt and they had to bear the post-war shame of
not writing the truth.
The Western Front was not the only front in this world war. Reporters
found censorship less rigidly applied on the Eastern Front, Palestine
and Italy. One correspondent, whose reports famously brought about the
sacking of the campaign commander and the ending of the fruitless and
bloody Gallipoli Expedition, bravely broke ranks and was finished as a
war reporter.
War reporting was not confined to print. The emergence of photographers
and cinematographers on the battlefield has left us with an
extraordinary record. Unlike their writing brothers, the photographers
could get close to the action and shoot what they liked. The resultant
film was, of course, censored but thankfully nothing was discarded and
museum archives are full of their stunning work.
Having been the pre-war stars of their newspapers, the war reporters
experienced a post-war wave of anger and cynicism which took years to
overcome.

Brian Best has an honours degree in South African History and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He was the founder of the Victoria Cross Society 2002 and edits its Journal. He also lectures about the Victoria Cross and War Art. His previous books include: The Curling Letters of the Zulu War (2001), Secret Letters from the Railway (2004), which has been republished in 2014 under the title of Burma Railway Man and Sister Janet (2006) - all published by Pen and Sword. He is married and lives in Rutland.