The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce

Abstract

Sweeney, Michael S. The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2006. 297 pp. $24.95. The statement following the colon in the tide of Michael Sweeney's latest book on the relationship between the American military and the media, uneasy truce, truly sums up its focus. Whenever military objectives in times of war cross paths with dissemination of information by the press, freedom of the press can become a casualty. In the worst of scenarios, the press becomes an enemy. In the best of relationships between the military and the press, the media police themselves, voluntarily limiting information but never being totally sure that even self-censorship will be satisfactory for military leaders. Sweeney, chair of the Department of Journalism and Communications at Utah State University, has compiled a concise history of war reporting, covering America's confrontations from the eighteenth century through the twenty-first. The book's eight chapters focus primarily on the twentieth century with one chapter covering all of the wars before World War I. A scholar who has produced outstanding research on World War II and censorship, Sweeney devotes two chapters to that war, one to World War I, one to Korea and Vietnam, one to post-Vietnam conflicts, and another to the mediamilitary relationship in the twenty-first century. Even though Sweeney is a former journalist, this history is not written solely from the point of view of the press, and this may be the most valuable element of this book. His narrative chides the government for heavy-handedness where it needs scolding, and it points out when the government has deserved praise for allowing the press to function independently. He does the same with the press, noting excesses and media efforts to fight for the right to share information with citizens. Court cases and government efforts at censorship entwine with stories of reporters and press decisions on whether to reveal highly controversial material or sit on it. Sweeney also presents the military-media relationship as an evolutionary one. The growing number of reporters and types of media available to cover conflicts from World War II forward, along with the time element involved in revealing information, have caused a rethinking of the way information should be shared. For him, the military-press relationship of World War II, though not perfect, exhibits a symbiotic relationship where mutual respect on both sides allowed the press and the military to work together. …