How trustworthy are newspaper accounts from the war?

[Felix C]

Have read quite a few newspaper accounts of naval incidents from 1914-1915 and some have drawn from official Admiralty announcements and others are of unknown providence.

Wonder if fabrication of experiences as part of propaganda or disinformation would be the case or not.

What have been your experiences in reading or research?

[John_Hartley]

About as trustworthy then as now - about just about anything. Packed full of political propaganda.

[David B]

Down at the bottom of the pecking order of people that one can trust are solicitors, used car salesmen, real estate agents and journalists. Work it out yourself.

[BillyH]

Down at the bottom of the pecking order of people that one can trust are solicitors, used car salesmen, real estate agents and journalists. Work it out yourself.

You missed Financial Advisers I think?

BillyH.

[David B]

Sorry I forgot about that lot.

[Guest]

The soldiers letters published, at least earlier in the war, seem authentic. They didn't fabricate, or 'edit' them, did they?

Mike

[egbert]

The soldiers letters published, at least earlier in the war, seem authentic. They didn't fabricate, or 'edit' them, did they?

Mike

If a soldier forgot to edit them they were censored, isn't that something modern day forum moderators still do?

[ss002d6252]

The soldiers letters published, at least earlier in the war, seem authentic. They didn't fabricate, or 'edit' them, did they?

Mike

The early to mid 1915 the letters that I've seen for the DLI T.F. men appear to be pretty much uncensored - place names are often present and the names of other officers and men are present as are discussions of casualties. From about mid 1915 there's a a sudden stoppage of letters in the papers so presumably they stepped up the censorship.

Craig

[Guest]

isn't that something modern day forum moderators still do?

I was meaning letters from early 1915 mainly, some are really quite honest?

Mike

[ss002d6252]

Although by the Lt Col of the Bn, this clipping is typical of the sort of info I have found (7th DLI)

Craig

[David Filsell]

Asan ex journo , I feel quite disappointed not to find bankers and politicians above me in the list.

[Felix C]

I have been reading through January 1917 on www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and truly impressed by the amount of info. there. Well some is erroneous. I refer to naval and maritime.

Edited 30 September , 2021 by Felix C

[Gunner Bailey]

I think it was a really a mish mash of truth and propaganda. Personal accounts were published as per Craig's post but much of what come out of the Government was what they wanted people to hear. You only have to look back at the large volumes published post war by Wilson and Hammerton, and the magazines published during the war to see that propaganda was in the majority. I certainly don't regard them as good history. 

[Guest]

Mate,

I found Austalian News papers tended to print letters from soldiers at the Front.

And like most, if not all Journo's (as they still do today) they never check the sources, and take the letter as fact?

Papers from the Gallipoli period tend to make up facts, mostly because information was hard to get back home so letters give a lest a possible news story.

Having been a victim of your press and ours, so I am anti media?

S.B

[KizmeRD]

Right from the very start, British newspapers went all in on demonising Germany by use of ‘atrocity propaganda’. Whether the motive for this was genuine patriotism, or a deliberate manipulation of the population for purposes of furthering the government agenda is a mater of debate. No one is denying that there weren’t true cases of Belgium citizens being unjustly executed as so-called francs-tireurs (in Dinant, Liège, Leuven and other places too), but rather the fact that too little attention was given to the veracity of a great many of the stories that were appearing in the papers at the time. That and the often hysterical style in which such articles were written suggests there was intentional bias aimed at creating mass support for the Government’s arbitrary decision to go to war in the first place, and not to allow any opportunity for questioning why exactly Britain was being sucked into a Continental conflict created as a consequence of some Serbian nationalists murdering an Austrian archduke.

During the opening years of the war many British blunders went unreported (and many German ‘victories’ got ignored). It’s a fact that there was a strict (albeit imperfect) attempt on the part of the Government to control everything that was being written about in print - through censorship and as a result of measures such as the Defence of the Realm Act, but in addition to this, there was also a pervasive culture of journalistic misreporting engendered by the evidently pro-war sentiments of many of Fleet Street’s powerful press proprietors themselves.

Individuals such as Northcliffe and Beaverbrook were hardly independent and dispassionate seekers of truth (later in the war under Lloyd George they were to become Director of Propaganda and Minister of information respectively). 

Anyone still in any doubt about the trustworthiness of British press reporting during the Great War need only read the Daily Mail’s front page account of the Battle of the Somme (subsequently earning the Mail’s reporter, William Beach Thomas, a knighthood).

MB

[David Filsell]

" arbitrary decision to go to war" ?

[Guest]

Dave,

Sorry Yes I would agree

What would have happened if Britain had not gone to war when Belgium was entered?

Well like the 1870 the invasion and the war would have been over in at lest a year, and the Germans gone home, like 1870-71

Not years of slaughter across the world

Britain spread the war across the world, not Germany, as it hungry tried to gooble up German Colonies

That's not fault of the British people, but you have to wonder who was pulling the strings here?

But this is not the place or time for this discussion

S.B

 

 

[David Filsell]

SB

You ignore the question of our clearly stated obligations to France.

Regards

David

[Guest]

Dave 

Britain when to war because of Belgium (treaty) not France

S.B

[KizmeRD]

Arbitrary in the sense that Britain was not absolutely and unquestionably committed to going to war in 1914 simply for the sake of Belgium (despite having signed the 1839 Treaty of London). In fact, a sizeable faction within Asquith’s Liberal Party was strongly against intervention. Even as late as 24th July Asquith was still writing letters stating that he saw no reason why we (Britain) should be anything more that spectators in the coming Armageddon. He left it very late before eventually coming to the conclusion that a French defeat would have left Germany in an intolerably strong position on the Continent, and that a Liberal Party divided on the issue of going to war would surely have lost control of the government to the more hawkish Conservatives. The turn-around in his thinking occurred quite swiftly.

MB

Edited 25 October , 2021 by KizmeRD

[corisande]

Most of my research is on the War of Independence in Ireland

Whenever there was an "incident" it would be reported in both Irish and British Press. The differences between the two versions is often striking - with the truth usually being somewhere in between the two versions

If you throw in the personal accounts that  are now available, then one can usually get a fairly reliable idea at what really happened.

I certainly would not put a lot of confidence in the reports from only one side

It is probably a bit like peoples choice of newspaper today, they read a newspaper that reflects their own viewpoint. And it is even more frightening still with their choice of social media

[KizmeRD]

Here’s an interesting front page from the Vancouver Sun reporting on the Battle of Jutland. 
MB

[KizmeRD]

Sorry, failed to explain in the above post why I found the front page story interesting.

If you compare what’s written with the official Admiralty communique, it’s clear that editorial bias always trumps the facts (Not that the Admiralty press announcement was completely accurate, but it certainly didn’t set out to massively misrepresent what had occurred….

The Secretary of the Admiralty makes the following announcement:

 On the afternoon of Wednesday, May 31, a naval engagement took place off the coast of Jutland. The British ships on which the brunt of the fighting fell were the battlecruiser fleet and some cruisers and light cruisers, supported by four fast battleships. Among these the losses were heavy.

The German battle fleet, aided by a low visibility, avoided prolonged action with our main forces, and soon after these appeared on the scene the enemy returned to port, though not before receiving severe damage from our battleships.

The battlecruisers Queen Mary, Indefatigable, Invincible and the cruisers Defence and Black Prince were sunk. The Warrior was disabled and, after being towed for some time, had to be abandoned by her crew. It is also known that the destroyers Tipperary, Turbulent, Fortune, Sparrowhawk and Ardent were lost, and six others are not yet accounted for.

No British battleships or light cruisers were sunk.

The enemy's losses were serious. At least one battle cruiser was destroyed and one severely damaged; one battleship reported sunk by our destroyers during a night attack; two light cruisers were disabled and probably sunk. The exact number of enemy destroyers disposed of during the action cannot be ascertained with any certainty, but it must have been large.

MB

 

[corisande]

The front page of a German paper covering the battle would be interesting, if anyone can access such a page

[ilkley remembers]

https://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0006/bsb00063941/images/index.html?id=00063941&groesser=&fip=193.174.98.30&no=&seite=911

 

1 hour ago, corisande said:

The front page of a German paper covering the battle would be interesting, if anyone can access such a page

try this link