Truth in War
The outbreak of warfare brings about a flurry of excitement, even among individuals considered to be politically apathetic. Suddenly, everyone feels compelled to inquire about whether their very survival is at stake. Media organisations experience a surge in demand for their services. The greater the state of panic, the keener is the interest in news. And yet, the importance of war does not guarantee any improvement in the quality of reportage. While more resources are devoted to covering armed conflict than, say, the activities of the local council, there is no assurance that what is reported is true or even objective.
In fact, it is more often the case that the onset of hostilities decreases the reliability of media information. To understand why this is so, I propose to construct a theoretical edifice with which we can evaluate the root causes of inaccurate reportage. The theory will then be evaluated in light of historical events.
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
In most cases, the problem of inaccurate reportage does not arise for the simple reason that there are multiple sources of information which can be used to cross-reference a particular story. Suppose that a reporter wished to write a story about an assault upon a person named Jones. They would have the option of interviewing the police, Jones himself, any witnesses or experts and (depending upon any rules of law regulating the situation) perhaps even a potential suspect.
Yet this ease of access to multiple sources is hardly assured during wartime. In a conflict situation, the reporter faces severe restrictions on who they can interview, not just because of censorship, but also because of the nature of warfare itself. Whereas during times of peace reporters may travel as they please, during war they are forced to rely upon the government as their primary source of information due to the inherent dangers of travelling in a war zone. Special safety precautions need to be taken, and security may be provided by government troops - leading to an excessively close relationship between the reporter and those whom he is covering.
Nor can events be independently verified. Attempts to verify government reports by interviewing bystanders or attempting to obtain the other side of a story can be prosecuted as 'treason' or 'consorting with the enemy'. As a result, even assuming the best of intentions and due care and diligence on the part of the media, truth is inevitably discarded during times of war.
Such practical difficulties are further compounded by the strong motive on the part of public officials to conceal the truth. The State, in order to sustain the revenue and support which it derives from the population, must give the appearance of success. Although most people will pay taxes to finance a war because of the threat of jail, many of them will resent doing so. It therefore becomes incumbent upon the State to mould public opinion in such a way as to ensure that the public does not rebel against it. Murray Rothbard explains how this is done:
"In most historical epochs, the State has... kept a tight control over religion, usually cementing a comfortable, mutually-supportive alliance with an Established Church: with the State granting the priests power and wealth, and the Church in turn teaching the subject population their divinely proclaimed duty to obey Caesar. But now that religion has lost much of its persuasive power in society, the State is often willing to let religion alone, and to concentrate on similar if looser alliances with more secular intellectuals. In either case, the State relies on control of the levers of propaganda to persuade its subjects to obey or even exalt their rulers."
Since government possesses practically unlimited resources to propagate its statist ideology, it is the single most potent source of information within any society. Not just that, but because the State controls all the levers of lawful coercion in society, it can suppress free speech and private property rights at will. In other words, not only is the State the most potent source of information, it can also suppress dissent to ensure that it is the only source of information. This has particular relevance in conflicts that occurred before the advent of the Internet, when it was not possible for the common person to easily access alternative news sources.
When prosecuting a war, the State finds it necessary to conceal its true economic costs so that citizens do not revolt. For if the general population realised how much the war was costing taxpayers, they may decide the war is not worth supporting after all. As Robert Higgs observes:
"The willingness of citizens to tolerate the costs, which must be borne if the policies are to be carried out, declines as the costs rise...Even the (initially) most popular war loses support as casualties mount, tax burdens rise, and military appetites consume more of the resources needed to produce civilian goods and services...Obviously, citizens will not react to the costs they bear if they are unaware of them. The possibility of driving a wedge between the actual and the publicly perceived costs creates a strong temptation for governments."
It is my contention that censorship and propaganda are merely one means of carrying out this imperative of cost-concealment. The former is used to eliminate potentially revelatory material that might undermine the war effort by revealing hidden costs, while the latter is used to bamboozle citizens "not by logical and persuasive argument but by emotional manipulation".
The truth may be discarded by propagandists when attempting to persuade a nation to enter into a war, as for instance when false British propaganda convinced Americans to abandon neutrality and enter the First World War. Alternatively, truth can be cast aside to persuade the public to 'stay the course' with an ongoing conflict. No doubt, the best current example of the latter is the lie, repeated frequently after the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In both cases opinion-molders in society, in order to further their purpose of inciting or maintaining public support for war, sought to distort the way events were reported.
APPLYING THE THEORY: WORLD WAR TWO
The events during World War II conformed to the theoretical framework I have outlined above. First, it was indeed the case that Australian reporters found it difficult to independently verify information and gain access to non-government sources. Early on, the federal executive received sweeping regulatory powers from Parliament under the National Security Regulations that allowed it to designate enemies of the state and strip journalists of the privilege of being allowed access to combat zones and the ministry of information. Journalists were required to register and comply with any relevant directives issued by the military.
The powers of state were such that religious and ethical beliefs of minorities were able to be punished, thus sending a warning to any journalists attempting to undermine the war effort through fact-checking. The Australia First Movement, the Communist Party of Australia, aborigines living on remote mission stations, and at least 1000 conscientious objectors to military service, were prosecuted and either banned, harassed or placed in jail. Moreover, 'Jehovah's Witnesses, whose beliefs forbade them to carry arms in the name of the nation, were declared illegal'. Some 22,000 (or 43%) of the foreigners living in Australia were classified as 'enemies', and prevented from working in shipping, altering their names, owning automobiles, boats, cameras, radios or moving about freely without police permission. In such a climate, it was hardly realistic to expect independent verification of information issued in government press releases.
Second, the Australian government did form an alliance with intellectuals and journalists to afford the war effort an aura of legitimacy. For example, in 1940 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation made clear that it was willing to assist in '[t]he dissemination of propaganda, direct and indirect'. Journalists such as Keith Murdoch were enlisted as apologists for the State, in recognition of their knowledge of 'the power of words and images to convey complex messages without offending the intelligence of the audience'.
One of the ironies of the censorship regime, as John Hilvert notes in his book Blue Pencil Warriors, was the widespread use of journalists to act as censors. Why people who we would expect to support free speech were so willing to participate in such activities remains something of a paradox for Hilvert, however if we view it in terms of a mutually beneficial power, wealth and ideological relationship between journalists and the State, as I have argued, then the reason for their support becomes more understandable.
Deploying patriotism and the threat of sanctions to encourage self-censorship by the media was another component of government strategy. This permitted officials to claim that there was voluntary compliance. Unfortunately, the reality was that many journalists did not even attempt stories out of fear that they would probably be questioned by censors. The result was, predictably, a stream of safe and uncontroversial stories, such as the documentaries focusing on Japanese atrocities that were run by some commercial stations.
Where self-censorship failed to achieve the desired results, the federal government was more than willing to use heavy-handed tactics. An example is the decision in 1944 to suppress all the major newspapers in Australia for a day. Another example is the banning of nine left-wing newspapers in May 1940.
Intellectuals were also recruited in service of the State. A report of the Department of Information boasted that their 'propaganda was constructed by a factual basis', and that 'a number of experienced University Professors and other authorities [were employed] to collate the material and write the original drafts from which the broadcasts and advertisements were constructed'. The report is notable for its candid admission that the material the government was producing was indeed propaganda.
Third, the Australian government did attempt to conceal the costs of war through censorship and propaganda. The government began issuing propaganda in 1939 in an attempt to distract attention from administrative failures and negative publicity. It was also designed to distract attention from the lower standards of living that all Australians had to endure, in the form of rationing, price controls and a greatly increased burden of taxation.
The propaganda argued that despite Australia's geographic isolation from the events of Europe, it was necessary to defend the British Empire. After 1941, when Japan became a direct threat to Australia's territorial integrity, there was outright abuse of the Japanese people, with pamphlets appealing to xenophobic sentiment to incite hatred of the 'slanty-eyed yellow men'. Such propaganda may have contributed to public support of the government's decision to intern or deport hundreds of Japanese citizens without due process.
The propaganda itself was largely without basis in fact. An illustration of this tendency to embellish is apparent from the material published by the Australian government claiming that Japanese soldiers were mistreating Australian prisoners of war. Yet solid evidence of mistreatment did not come to light until 1945, as Saunders points out:
"In Australia, revelations about Japanese atrocities against allied prisoners of war were not widely known until September 1945, although the report of William Webb of March 1944 suggests that senior officials had some sketchy knowledge, though by no means detailed or verified, of severe contraventions of human rights. Indeed, specific evidence was not necessary in order to conduct an intensive propaganda campaign - long-held fears and sentiments of hatred alone provided the rationale and its receptiveness to the Australian public."
The ultimate aim of such government 'publicity' (as propaganda was euphemistically known) was to inspire a sense of community and nationalism on the part of Australians. However, it was a vulgar type of nationalism that equated the interests of society with the interests of the State, rather than viewing individuals as having distinct and separate loyalties. In the government's view, individuals could achieve greatness only through service to the State. This collective mentality promoted by the government was greatly influential on the editorial boards of various media. For example, patriotism (of the sort that demands worship of the State) dominated the pages of Woman's Weekly, which sold over half a million copies of each issue. In this magazine, there was a regular column glorifying soldiers entitled 'Letters from Our Boys'. Special issues dealing with different aspects of military life were printed, and generals and other servicemen were featured prominently on the magazine cover. Without any coercion whatsoever, the ideology that permeated from government bureaus had been adopted by a leading publication in Australia. This demonstrates the extent to which daily life had been politicised.
Finally, the monopoly power exercised over the postal service was the keystone underlying the entire system; it allowed the government to intercept mail and implement its censorship regime. Private competing mail services, which may have been able to circumvent censors and permit revelations about the costs of war, were naturally prohibited.
CONCLUSION
In sum, the record of history strongly supports the thesis that the truth is the first casualty of war. It is inherent in the nature of the State, or perhaps in human beings themselves, to want to disguise their failures and shortcomings. The added pressures of democratic politics, where re-election demands a record of successful achievement, naturally leads government to curb civil liberties in a variety of ways, including the implementation of regimes of censorship and propaganda. Although this is justified on grounds of defense, it is doubtful that this is really the case, even assuming that the nebulous concept of 'national security' could be adequately defined. More likely, it is an attempt to conceal the costs of war and maintain popular support for ineffective policies.
The proposition 'the truth is the first casualty of war' flows axiomatically from the fact of war itself; it is, in effect, a tautology. It is easy enough to see this once we ask a crucial question: by whom is the truth discarded? Is it by private sector individuals or groups such as the media? Or is it the source of deceit primarily the government? As I have shown, it is natural for the State (as the entity with the strongest vested interest in actually waging a war successfully) to be the primary source of lies during wartime. Its false information, used to support the political incumbency of whichever party is in power at the time, is then filtered through the opinion-moulders - the intellectuals and journalists - to the masses.
Bibliography
Beaumont, Joan. Australia's War 1939-45 (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1996).
Blackshield, Tony and Williams, George. Australian Constitutional Law and Theory (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2006).
Denson, John. The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008).
Goldstein, Tom. Killing the Messenger: 100 Years of Media Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
Higgs, Robert. Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
Higgs, Robert. Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology and the Growth of Government (Oakland: Independent Institute, 2007).
Hilvert, John. Blue Pencil Warriors: Censorship and Propaganda in World War Two (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984).
Newcity, Michael. "Reviews." Australian Journal of Law and Society 2 (1984): 170-178.
O'Brien, Ilma. "Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers in Second World War Australia." Australian Journal of Politics and History 53 (2007): 207-220.
Robertson, John. Australia at War 1939-1945 (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1981).
Rothbard, Murray. The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
Saunders, Kay. "An Instrument of Strategy: Propaganda, Public Policy and the Media in Australia during the Second World War." War & Society 15 (1997): 75-90.