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This is coolbert:

"Good news is NO news" - - Walter Cronkite.

During the Vietnam War, I think it is safe to say the the press, for reasons known only to themselves, were either ambivalent or even hostile to the American effort.

Took a malicious, even perverse and delighted pleasure in reporting failures of U.S. and South Vietnamese forces.

A hostile press was cited by General Westmoreland as being one of many reasons that accounted for American failure in Vietnam.

Such a situation did not exist in World War Two [WW2]. General Eisenhower seems to have been accomplished at cultivating journalists, who were given officer rank, uniforms, and accorded the privileges of a staff officer.

Ike also had censorship on his side, rigorously applied. Presumably this gave him a big advantage over Westmoreland.

One can only imagine the effect that journalists reporting from the Normandy beaches, 6 June 1944, would have had on the American and British public if they had embedded reporters, satellite communications, "unfettered access" and NO censorship.

Those reporters at Normandy would have had a LOT of bad news to report.

Such as:

* The parachute troops, three divisions of them, ALL, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, missed their drop zones.

* The first wave of troops ashore from the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division ALL LANDED AT THE WRONG BEACHES. Every one of them. This even after the most intensive preparation and training and gathering of intelligence.

* An entire battalion of Sherman tanks, made amphibious [a DD tank] by specially designed flotation collars, sank. Twenty seven tanks went to the bottom [no word is given of what happened to the presumed remaining five??]. NOT ONE MADE IT ASHORE. [these tanks were supposed to given the first wave of troops at Omaha beach a big advantage of the German defenders. It all came to NAUGHT!!

* The U.S. Rangers, scaling the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, and assaulting what was believed to be the gun positions of German artillery, found only empty emplacements!! NOT ONE GUN WAS PRESENT. The Rangers suffered 50 % casualties to attack an enemy position that they need not have!! [in the movie "The Longest Day", Sal Mineo, playing the role of an Army Ranger says, "you mean, we came all this way, for nothing??!!]

* The massed Allied bomber force, thousands of them, dropping many more thousands of bombs, TOTALLY MISSED THEIR TARGETS. The American and British bombers DID NOT HIT ONE THING OTHER THAN EMPTY FARM FIELDS. [the day was cloudy, and the bombers tried to time their bomb drop, without success.]

And this was only the first day of the allied invasion!!

In the days and weeks following the landings on the Sixth of June, things did not go smoothingly well either. Reporters "telling things like they were", would have certainly have been able to portray Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery as being just a bunch of incompetents.

* The capture of Cherbourg, a vital objective, was delayed. American forces did not press the attack as they should have. When the port city was captured, it was found that the harbor had been rendered unusable . The German defenders had been given time to scuttle a number of ships, making the harbor useless. It took a month just to clear the harbor to allow for further ship traffic.

"the Cherbourg commander, Lieutenant General von Schlieben, capitulated on June 26 after destroying most of the facilities, making the harbor inoperable until the middle of August."

* The British suffered catastrophic losses during "Operation Goodwood". British and Canadian tanks advanced straight into the massed 88 mm anti-tanks guns of the Waffen SS. Result - - over 400 Sherman tanks destroyed in the space of several days!!

"After four days of intense combat, with the loss of more than 400 tanks, all that had been achieved was an advance of roughly eight miles"

Results like this, reported to the American and British public by a press without censorship, "unfettered", would have been a bombshell to morale and the over-all war effort. Folks on the home front would have really begun to wonder what was going on and if this was all worth it!!

This did not happen. Allied forces were successful in liberating France from German control by the end of September 1944. Ike, Bradley, and Montgomery were resolute men and were not deterred by initial bad results as occurred in the Normandy campaign.

They did not also have to face a HOSTILE press!!

coolbert.