News from the Front

Using real newspaper reports from the period, this text examines how the perception by the military of World War I newspaper correspondents changed, from banned outlaws initially, to official mouthpieces by 1918. Martin Farrar relates their troubled story and focuses in particular on the work of five men who became accredited to the British General Headquarters: William Beach Thomas, Philip Gibbs, Percival Phillips, Perry Robinson and Herbert Russell. Their actions not only affected the mass media's credibility at the time, but also raised the possibility that, had the truth been told in the first place, the war could have over long before 1918.