Word: censorships
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...week long, the whereabouts of the bulk of the U.S. Eighth Army, along the Seoul-Taejon axis, was obscured by censorship. For all that news readers in the U.S. knew to the contrary, the Eighth might have been retreating pell- mell toward Taejon. This week news of an allied counterattack in the Osan sector made it clear that the Army was no longer in retreat...
...Eighth Army last week clamped an airtight censorship on all news from Korea. Colonel R. L. Thompson, Major General Matthew Ridgway's information boss, issued 1,600 words of regulations that forbade correspondents to describe armament and equipment, discuss the Army's "strength, efficiency, morale," identify troops by unit or location, or even to mention the presence of U.S. troops in any sector until the enemy knew it. Dispatches not only had to be "accurate in statement and in implication" but so written as not to "injure the morale of our forces or our allies and . . . not embarrass...
Strait Jacket? Actually, the regulations, drastic though they sounded, were from the censorship provisions of the Army Field Manual, under which war correspondents worked during World War II. What shook newsmen was not the language, but the way Thompson's small band of inexperienced censors began interpreting it. Newsmen were told that they might no longer use the word "retreat." Retreat, it appeared, was only what the enemy did. The Eighth Army's backpedaling was all part of a plan, said security officers, therefore it should and would be called a "withdrawal"no exceptions tolerated...
From Tokyo, which still had only "advisory" censorship, correspondents fired off hot protests. Russell Brines, A.P.'s Tokyo chief, cabled that "censorship is throwing a black curtain around [the] news." The New York Times's Dick Johnston reported the convictionusually sound in such casesthat it "was being used to cover up military errors and defeats...
...first, MacArthur's spokesmen in Tokyo seemed just as bewildered as newsmen. Colonel Marion P. Echols, MacArthur's information boss, said he had not even seen the new censorship rules from Korea except in a "telephoned and garbled version." But next day, Colonel Echols himself announced still further restrictions on news. Henceforth, he declared, MacArthur's own headquarters would issue no further information concerning land, sea or air operations in Korea. All this would come from lower-command headquarters, i.e., the Eighth Army and naval and air force commands. The Chicago Daily News's Correspondent Keyes...