The Press: Phony Photos

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From Tunisia, fortnight ago, came five striking newspictures. U.S. publishers played them big. One was particularly eye-catching: a photo of a U.S. patrol advancing across a Tunisian plain while in the foreground Medical Corpsmen fixed up a wounded trooper. TIME and the news papers, rushing to press, played the picture straight. The New York Daily News gave it a ten-column, double-truck display, called it "a great battle picture"; so did Editor & Publisher, publication trade weekly. LIFE, pondering the picture, had grave qualms, finally printed it double-spread, but with a skeptical caption: ". . . In spite of the apparent approach of enemy planes . . . soldiers are still rid ing forward, not bothering to take cover. . . . Furthermore, none of the soldiers is looking at the bomb bursts [which] them selves are not behaving exactly the way bomb bursts usually behave. ..."

Last week U.S. publishers learned that they had been hoaxed. The photos did not show U.S. troops under hostile bombardment, as the official captions had said.

They showed troops training in Africa under simulated battle conditions. The photos were taken by Associated Press Photographer Harrison B. Roberts, who wrote "misleading" captions for them. What might have given U.S. citizens pause was the undeniable fact that both photos and captions had been passed by Army field censors, approved for publication by the War Department's Bureau of Public Relations in Washington, and released under the war picture-pooling arrangement.

At week's end a red-faced A.P. asked a red-faced War Department to cancel Roberts' correspondent status. The War Department obliged. Roberts will be brought home. Nobody would bring the field censors home. Nobody could bring the War Department home.