War News Blue and Gray in Black and White: Newspapers in the Civil War
by Brayton Harris
Following the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Henry Villard, a special correspondent for the New York Herald, described one of the many problems confronting reporters attempting to write about Civil War battles and soldiers. “In the camps, as in the newspapers, you find it difficult to winnow the truth from the bushel of falsehood,” Villard wrote. “Here are the ordinary obstacles to learning the facts about a battle—the jealousies, the cliques, the inordinate ambitions, the untrust-worthiness of eyes and ears during periods of great excitement.…”
Newspapers as a business and journalism as a profession came of age during the Civil War. A literate population plus new technologies such as the telegraph and the steam-powered rotary printing press made newspapers a growing and very competitive industry. Special correspondents, most of them young and inexperienced, overcame attempts at censorship by politicians and military officials, dodged shot and shell on the battlefield, and endured the hardships of campaigning, all to bring news of the war to eager readers.
Brayton Harris, an independent historian with an eclectic frame of reference, has reprinted many stories and anecdotes about this army of intrepid journalists in War News Blue and Gray, originally published in 1999. While “the modern concept of ‘balanced reporting’ was unknown,” Brayton concludes “this made for a lively press, but left an uncertain historical record.”
Nevertheless, Brayton doggedly attempts to separate the wheat from the chaff. He describes how opinionated publishers, North and South, whipped up war fever among the civilian population, details attempts to advance the careers and enhance the exploits of military favorites, chronicles how newspapers covered controversial events like the Emancipation Proclamation, and uses the Battle of Fredericksburg as an example of on-the-scene-reporting.
Brayton’s analysis of the newspaper industry during America’s sectional conflict is a timely reminder that press reports, especially in wartime, always need to be read with a critical eye.
Originally published in the April 2011 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
