Press: Censorship's Progress

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By way of clamping down a tight censorship of news and photographs the eight westernmost states and Alaska last fortnight were officially made a "Theater of Operations." All news and photographs of troops, their identity, location, number, individual names was forbidden except with official sanction. The Navy next issued a strong warning "To the Public" with subheads reading: THIS IS A MODERN WAR—THIS IS A TOTAL WAR—THIS IS A HARSH WAR. It warned citizens not to discuss ships, sailors, weapons, casualties, ship damage or defense production. Still more drastically, Army and Navy on the West Coast began censoring domestic telegrams and examining air express.

The first shakedown stage of U.S. censorship brought up a few baffling cases of censorship in action. Most striking example: Columnists Pearson and Allen (Washington Merry-Go-Round) were called on the carpet by a White House spokesman, and told to withdraw an about-to-be-published column criticizing Navy's competence at Pearl Harbor. They were told that if they did not change their editorial attitude they would be barred from all official news sources—a penalty which would virtually put any Washington newspaperman out of business. On the surface the action looked like an attempt to suppress criticism of the conduct of the war—something far beyond the legitimate function of a military censorship.

Meanwhile, new Censor Byron Price, squeezed into offices in the Post Office Building, was hampered in his efforts to set up a smooth-functioning censorship machinery by a deluge of newsmen's questions that made him the most consulted man in Washington. He did get two assistants to help him: to assist in radio censorship, 56-year-old, Ohio-born John H. Ryan, vice president and general manager of a Midwest radio chain; to assist with press censorship, 45-year-old, Arkansas-born John H. Sorrells, Scripps-Howard executive editor (since 1930).

Army and Navy each continued to run its own censorship show independently. The Navy drafted Editor Paul Smith of the San Francisco Chronicle as chief of its press section. The Army reached new heights in its definition of what constitutes a military secret. The Army now feels it is a secret that the chief plant of American Locomotive is located at —: there is no such thing as Glenn Martin's aircraft plant at Baltimore, and Bethlehem Steel may or may not be located at Sparrows Point. In short, information that is common knowledge or a matter of public record and which doesn't require even a third-grade education to digest or collate is not supposed to be repeated in print. Army's ideas of non-printable "secret" information thus included even such information as is contained in telephone directories and standard reference works. Washington correspondents hoped that the first hysteria of censorship would soon pass.