The Press: I Accuse

World War II is the best-reported war in history, but its coverage is still far from perfect. Last week Editor & Publisher printed a vigorous letter from Saipan which illuminated one of the most serious shortcomings. The letter was from the Chicago Times's Correspondent Keith Wheeler. Excerpts:

"I accuse the American press of having, in handling the story of the battle of Saipan, committed one of the most disgraceful flubs in the history of American journalism.

"My accusation, I admit, is based upon fragmentary evidence—upon the six clippings which I received yesterday and upon a few recent Honolulu and West Coast papers which have drifted in here. I know this story broke at a time when it had to compete with several other big stories: the investment of Cherbourg, the flight of B-29s to Japan, the Republican National Convention. The American press, with its stubborn refusal to recognize the Pacific, played it for a very bad fourth.

"It has always been and is now the case that headquarters correspondents in Pearl Harbor scoop reporters on the scene of action by periods ranging from hours to days. In the beginning of the battle of Saipan it was days, because those at headquarters had means to move any copy they chose to write while we at the scene had none."

"All this is by way of preamble to an accusation that the Pearl Harbor correspondents write tripe and lies and kill Pacific stories before the truth can get out. Correspondents in Pearl Harbor, writing from a ten-line communique and feeling a terrible compulsion to produce prose, pump their stories full of pure fancy and balderdash. Because they must write something and know no better, they begin each battle in triumph and write it off to a victorious finish by the second day.

"Thus within less than a week, and before the first on-the-scene copy reached the States, the PH experts had begun and ended the battle of Saipan. In Pearl Harbor they wrote with beautiful enthusiasm of American troops swamping the Japs, sweeping up Saipan's beach, blasting blithely through its defenses, sprinting to the island's biggest airport, largest town, highest mountain. They wrote with such smug confidence of victory that no reader and no editor could doubt that American troops here were engaged in a picnic of no consequence. So long as press communications remain as they are in the Pacific the PH copy will always get there first—and will always be false."