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Words & ReflectionsThe Cold War Generation of Patriotic JournalistsWhat happens when journalism becomes government propaganda?U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960Nancy E. BernhardCambridge University Press. 245 Pages. $59.95.By Michael J. KirkhornWe shouldn’t be surprised tolearn that network journalistsand executives lent or soldthemselves to the agencies of anticommunistgovernment propaganda duringthe early years of the Cold War. Thiswas a generation of patriotic journalists.Their loyalty during the SecondWorld War, as well as their hatred forfanaticism, prepared them for this nextcrusade.The threat to peace and securityposed by the Soviet Union followed soquickly on the heels of the defeat of theNazis and the Japanese that nothingmore than the turning of a page wasinvolved for journalists to transfer theirloyalties to this new circumstance. Anedge of resentment was added by thefact that the threat of Soviet expansionand subversion was regarded as thebetrayal by a wartime ally of the promiseof peace to which so many had beensacrificed.An inspiring sense of common purposeduring World War II thinned themembrane between press and government.In the years following the end ofthe war, loyalty to country and cooperationwith government agencies werehabits of the mind that could be readilyexploited. There also was an ideologicalundertone. A strong dislike for Sovietcommunism was an American journalisticinstinct that went back to thereporting on the Soviet revolution andthe civil war that followed. For manyAmerican journalists, the Cold Warbecame a full-throttle acceleration ofanticommunist sentiments that hadbeen idling in the journalistic mindsince 1917.Thoroughly researched and forth-right in its conclusions, Nancy E.Bernhard’s book, “U.S. Television Newsand Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960,”documents the extent of the collaborationbetween government and broadcastnews organizations during thoseyears. She analyzes these relationshipsat the level of institutional cooperationwhere, under the headings of “nationalsecurity state” and “Cold War consensus,”network bosses and governmentofficials participated in a variety of practicesdesigned to act against the communistthreat. Among these practiceswere the imposition of anticommunistviewpoints on news coverage, the controlor suppression of detracting reports,and the invention of programs athome and abroad that played upon the“red scare” and promoted Americanefforts to counter Communism.Bernhard’s research justifies sweepingconclusions. “In the mid-twentiethcentury,” she writes, “the politicaleconomy of the mass media was intimatelytied up with the articulation ofCold War policies, and objectivity becamegrounded in fervent anticommunism.”In describing the dwindlingbelief that in the crusade against Communismtruthfulness should be a distinguishingfeature of U.S. propaganda,she writes that by 1948, Congress, theDepartments of Defense and State, andthe three networks agreed that “Allinformation had military implications.”Bernhard goes on to assert that, as aconsequence, “The Cold War madepropaganda an integral part of Americanforeign policy and took as its casualtyconfidence that the United Stateswould triumph in the marketplace ofideas.”Bernhard proceeds to demonstratehow the same impulse influenced domestictelevision programming as it,too, spread propaganda and ignoreddissent. One of her many examples wasa television program called “Battle Report-Washington”that had a sizeablenational audience from 1950 to 1953,when the United States was at waragainst North Korea and China. Thisprogram, featuring interviews withgovernment and military leaders, wasproduced in the White House andbroadcast by NBC for the purpose ofgiving “the people of the United Statesa firsthand account of what the FederalGovernment is doing in the worldwidebattle against Communism.” Its bellicositymakes Ronald Reagan’s remarkabout the “evil empire” sound sedate.Nieman Reports / Fall 1999 71