What if no one reported on the Revolutionary War?

What if no one reported on the Revolutionary War?

1770s-1850s: Baptism Under Fire
While Revolutionary War-era newspapers published news of battles, the information usually was second-hand and often inaccurate. By the early 1800s, however, journalists were daring to venture out on the battlefield and see for themselves what was happening.

The first-ever war correspondent may have been Louisiana newspaper editor and publisher James Bradford, who covered the War of 1812 by enlisting in Gen. Andrew Jackson's army. By the Mexican War of 1846-48, newspapers such as the Baltimore Sun had figured out how to utilize horseback couriers and steamboats to get the latest war news back to their readers, often before military couriers were able to inform the White House of what was happening.

George Wilkins Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune, who had been captured and imprisoned in a Mexican leper colony during his coverage of the Texans' earlier rebellion against Mexico, rode into battle with U.S. forces on the Rio Grande and actually captured an enemy battle flag. He followed Gen. Winfield Scott on the invasion of Mexico, and was wounded in the knee in the assault on Chapultepec.

By the 1850s American correspondents even were covering wars overseas. In 1859, Henry J. Raymond, one of the founders of the New York Times, and the paper's Paris correspondent, W. E. Johnston, witnessed the Battle of Solferino, one of the key moments in the struggle for Italian unification, and published an account in the Times 10 days before any other newspaper got the story.

1860s: An Army of Scribes
The Civil War was the first modern conflict to attract huge press coverage. At least 500 journalists covered the conflict, including 150 who dared to venture out on the front lines and travel with the armies. The New York Herald alone had 63 men in the field.

Military men still considered the press a nuisance, or worse — Gen. William T. Sherman, for example, blamed the Union defeat at the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861 on Northern papers revealing too much of the Union's battle plans. (Actually, Confederate commander G.T. Beauregard had help from a spy in Washington.) Virtually from the start, Abraham Lincoln's administration tried to exercise control over what the press was writing, seizing control of telegraph lines, confiscating editions of newspapers and even threatening journalists with trials before military tribunals if they revealed anything considered too sensitive.

But Lincoln also recognized, wisely, that the right sort of war coverage could help hold together the politically divided North. Indeed, articles such as the New York Times' story of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 — a "Splendid Triumph of the Army of the Potomac," as the headline proclaimed — undoubtedly helped rally support for the Union cause.

While much of Civil War reporting consisted simply of generals' public recitations of skirmish locations and casualties, there was the occasional breathless dispatch from a correspondent caught in the fray. "We had a brisk little time here Yesterday morning," wrote an unnamed New York Times journalist from Cold Harbor in 1864. "The enemy made a dash at our pickets, with the intention of gaining control of the entire line of rifle pits ... little did they dream of the treatment in store for them."

http://military.discovery.com/randr/interactives/reporters/timeline/timeline.html

These are just some of the newspapers published at the time.

Boston Evening Post
Maryland Journal
American Oracle of Liberty
Massachusetts Spy
South Carolina Gazette
New-York Journal
New-England Chronicle
(N.J.) Plaindealer
Pennsylvania Journal
Virginia Gazette
New-Jersey Journal


http://www.historicpages.com/18thc.htm

As you can see above, most of the reports of the Revolutionary war came from second hand accounts and most were unreliable. The question is, what would have happened if no one reported on any of it? How would the historians know what happened at places like Valley Forge? Would we have history books covering every war this nation has been involved in?

"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1600.htm

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804. ME 11:33

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1600.htm

When it comes to covering the war, we need to remember that if the reporters are censored, we loose. The free press is considered the forth estate of the nation. Jefferson was so determined to have a free press that he said he would rather have a free press than a government.

Thomas Jefferson, on the necessity of a free press (1787)

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

As we can see, there should be no censorship of the press since it was never the intent of the Founding Fathers to allow it.

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Naturally it should always be the responsibility of the reporters to use wise judgment in what they report but if they pass something off as fact, they should be ready to prove it. Another reporter doing their job would be able to either verify the report of prove it's false. The problem with the lead up to the invasion of Iraq is that there were very few doing their jobs and those who did we isolated, relegated to smaller media outlets and in the process, created the world of news blogs. After all considering the newspapers rely so heavily on advertisers, the editors have to walk a fine line to please the advertisers instead of informing the public. That was the biggest downfall of the media. When money meant more than truth.


We have so little being reported from Iraq and Afghanistan while for nearly 7 years, we've been told how important these to occupations are to the security of the nation and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent along with far too many lives. Most of the nation has no clue what is going on in either nation. While the generals and NATO forces have been screaming for help for several years, and rightly so, the vast majority of the fraction of war reporting being done has only focused on Iraq, ignoring these pleas when there was a chance to truly secure Afghanistan. Noting that Iraq has been center of the storm of anger, Afghanistan has been forgotten by those who began the invasion and subsequent occupation of it. When was the last time you heard any in Congress debating Afghanistan or heard Bush mention it? Hardly ever. Yet Afghanistan was in direct response to the attacks against the US.

We see the reports of deaths coming out of both occupations but we have to know where to look to find them. What is harder to find is when they die after leaving the battlefields. The majority of these deaths, the ultimate sacrifice, are ignored and not included in the final tally. While this is not a new practice for the Department of Defense, it is a deplorable one. Asked why they do not include these deaths, they claim there is no way to track them. Just as there is supposedly no way to track how many commit suicide because of their service to this nation, or how many become homeless. The truth is that there are ways they can if they wanted to. The DOD has the equipment to find them if they wanted to but then it would bring such a picture of truth to the American public that wars would no longer be tolerated. Imagine if you will the Vietnam Memorial Wall including all those who died as a result of Agent Orange or PTSD. With over 58,000 names on the Wall as it is, could you envision the size of it with several hundred thousand names on it?

When it comes to our troops and our wounded, we don't have a clue unless we spend countless hours searching for it to even obtain a impression of the truth. The suppression of facts leaves us ambivalent. It's time Congress stepped in and removed the barriers to real reports so that once again we can in fact claim those who serve this country are serving a grateful one fully aware of the sacrifices they are making.


Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington