CMMNA450 term project, spring 2003:
America's War Correspondents |
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At the beginning of the American Civil War, the physician-writer Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed the public's need to have news from the battlefields in an essay he titled "Bread and the Newspaper." He stated his thesis this way:
THIS is the new version of the Panem et Circenses of the Roman populace. It is our ultimatum, as that was theirs. They must have something to eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and the papers to read.
Everything else we can give up. Only bread and the newspaper we must have, whatever else we do without.
So it has been in every war. Americans have considered the mass media an essential part of their daily lives so that they could know what their husbands, fathers and sons are facing on the battlefield. Holmes himself had a son who was a lieutenant in the Union army, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who would later gain fame as a justice of the United States Supreme Court, and one who helped to interpret the meaning of the First Amendment in war time.
In this spring of 2003, with the United States again mobilizing for a war and the nation's news media preparing to cover the hostilities, we are going to take a look back at the way in which correspondents have covered earlier wars in which Americans have been involved. Your job is to write an academically-sound feature article about one of those correspondents for a publication like Smithsonian or American Heritage. You are to focus not solely on the correspondent, but on one major event the correspondent covered; that might be Stephen Crane covering the charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War or Ernie Pyle surveying the wreckage on the beach at Normandy after the D-Day. But you are to put it in the broader context of the correspondent's journalistic work-who was the correspondent and how did he or she arrive at that point. To express it another way, highlight one of the correspondent's major stories, but also provide a biographical sketch of the person and, if you think it necessary, show the person's relationship to other reporters.
Below is a list of correspondents from which you may choose. Some are newspaper journalists, some radio or television reporters, some photojournalists, and the wars they covered have ranged from the Mexican War to the Vietnam War, so you should be able to find someone on the list of particular interest to you. (You'll see that some reporters and photographers who covered the Spanish Civil War are also included; a substantial number of idealistic young Americans participated in that conflict, on the eve of World War II, and it was well-covered by American correspondents.)
As with any good feature article, your piece should be thoroughly researched and based on both primary and secondary sources; that is, you must read or view the correspondent's journalistic work as well as articles and books that will give you background material on the person.
The usual magazine article, of course, is not footnoted, but you must cite the sources for your statements. You must provide a bibliography of all of the sources you use. You must also hand in photocopies of the title pages of the books you used and the first pages of the articles.
You must do your own work. As you should have read in the textbook you used for Beginning Reporting, "Plagiarism is another form of lying. Simply defined, plagiarism consists of taking the work of others and putting one's own name on it, thereby passing it off as one's own." Reporters and columnists who put their names on the works of others are summarily fired; any student in this course who uses the work of someone else, in whole or in part, without attribution will fail the course. That penalty is in keeping with the policy on the integrity of student work stated in the 2001-2003 edition of the "University Bulletin," pp. 45-46.
Correspondents
Print/news service reporters
Peter Arnett, Vietnam; Gulf War
George W. Bagby-Civil War
Homer Bigart--Korea
Anna Benjamin--Sp.-Am. War
Therese Bonney-WW II
Stephen Bonsal-Sp.-Am. War
Hal Boyle-WW II; Korea; Vietnam
Malcolm Browne-Vietnam
Esther Bubley-WW II
Homer Byington Civil War
Sylvanus Cadwallader-Civil War
Thomas Morris Chester-Civil War
Ruth Cowan-WW II
Virginia Cowles-WW II
May Craig-WW II
Stephen Crane-Sp.-Am. War
James Creelman-Sp.-Am. War
Walter Cronkite-WW II
Richard Harding Davis-Sp.-Am. War; WW I
Richard S. Elliott-Mexican War
Toni Frissell-WW II
Janet Flanner-WW II
Joseph Galloway-Vietnam
Martha Gellhorn-Spanish Civil War; WW II; Vietnam
Floyd Gibbons-WW I
Daniel F. Gilmore-WW II; Vietnam
David Halberstam-Vietnam
W. C. Heinz-WW II
Ernest Hemingway-Spanish Civil War; WW II
Michael Herr--Vietnam
John Hersey-WW II
Marguerite Higgins-WW II; Korea
Peggy Hull--WW I; WW II
Edwin L. James-WW I
Stanley Johnston--WW II
Ward Just-Vietnam
Peter Kalischer-Korea
George Wilkins Kendall-Mexican War
Edward Knoblaugh-Spanish Civil War
A.J. Leibling-WW II
Clare Boothe Luce-WW II
Herbert L. Matthews-Spanish Civil War
Charles Mohr-Vietnam
Marvin Breckinridge Patterson-WW II
Ernie Pyle-WW II
John Reed-WW I
Whitelaw Reid-Civil War
Frederick Remington-Sp.-Am. War
Quentin Reynolds-WW II
Albert Richardson-Civil War
Mary Roberts Rinehart-WW II
Andy Rooney-WW II
Harrison Salisbury-Vietnam
Neil Sheehan-Vietnam
Howard K. Smith-WW II
George Smalley-Civil War
John Steinbeck-WW II
Jane Swisshelm--Civil War
Lowell Thomas-WW I
Dorothy Thompson-WW II
George Alfred Townsend-Civil War
Richard Tregaskis-WW II; Korea; Vietnam
Andrew Tully-WW II
Ralph W. Tyler-WW I
Don Whitehead-WW II; Korea
Sam Wilkeson-Civil War
Franc Wilkie-Civil War
Tom Wolfe-Vietnam
Photojournalists
Eddie Adams-Vietnam
George M. Barnard-Civil War
Matthew Brady-Civil War
Margaret Bourke-White-WW II; Korea
Robert Capa-Spanish Civil War; WW II; Korea; Vietnam
Dickey Chapelle-WWII; Vietnam
David Douglas Duncan--Korea
Horst Faas-Vietnam
Alexander Gardner-Civil War
James F. Gibson-Civil War
David Hume Kennerly--Vietnam
Dorothea Lange-WW II
Carl Mydans-WW II
Timothy O'Sullivan-Civil War
Eugene Smith-WW II
"Nick" Ut-Vietnam
Broadcast journalists
Peter Kalischer-Vietnam
John Lawrence-Vietnam
Larry LeSueur-WW II
Edward R. Murrow-WWII
Morley Safer-Vietnam
Eric Severeid-WW II
William L. Shirer-WW II
Howard K. Smith-WW II
Selected Bibliography
Books
Brown, Charles H. The Correspondents' War: Journalism in the Spanish-American War. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967.
Collier,Richard. Fighting Words: the War Correspondents of World War II. New York: St Martin's Press. 1989.
Crozier, Emmet. American Reporters on the Western Front,1914 1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Emery, Michael. On the Front Lines: Following America's Foreign Correspondents Across the Twentieth Century. Washington, DC: American University, 1995.
Hohenberg, John. Foreign Correspondence: The Great Reporters and Their Times. New York: Columbia University Press. 1964.
Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty: From Crimea to Vietnam: War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
Prochnau, William. Once Upon a Distant War. New York: Times Books, 1995.
Reporting World War II: American Journalism, 1938-1946. 2 vols. New York: Library of America, 1995.
Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959-1975. 2 vols. New York: Library of America, 1998.
Sorel, Nancy Caldwell. The Women Who Wrote the War. Toronto, ON, Canada: HarperCollins Canada, Limited, 2000.
Starr, Louis M. Reporting the Civil War. New York: Collier Books, 1962.
Internet Sources
"The American War Correspondent Photo Registry."
Evans, Harold. "Reporting in the Time of Conflict."
Giessel, Jess. "Black, White and Yellow, Journalism and Correspondents of the Sp.-Am. War."
"Vietnam: Yesterday and Today: Reporters, Journalists.