# What would WWI be like with today's journalists and reporting technology? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 7, 2011, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-wwi-be-like-with-todays-journalists-and-reporting-technology/605375 "2011-12-07T15:11:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-wwi-be-like-with-todays-journalists-and-reporting-technology/605375/21 "2011-12-09T11:52:07Z")
Something I’d forgotten that is covered quite well in [The Censored War](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300062915/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=17009465016&ref=pd_sl_7dtmqv81kn_e) is the doling out of the death card. Early in WW2 virtually all pictures of dead Americans were censored aside from flag draped coffins. Later in the war, fearing public complacency very graphic pictures of dead Americans were released (so be aware that this is what the following links lead to), such as [this](http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/three-dead-americans-lie-on-the-beach-at-buna/) now famous picture entitled "Three dead Americans lie on the beach at Buna” that cleared the censors for publication in Life magazine’s September 20th 1943 issue. By 1945 they had gotten even more graphic such as [this](http://library.marshallfoundation.org/posters/library/posters/poster_full.php?poster=637) famous poster distributed to factories engaged in the war effort showing a slumped over dead American soldier with the caption "THIS HAPPENS EVERY 3 MINUTES / STAY ON THE JOB _AND GET IT OVER._ ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-wwi-be-like-with-todays-journalists-and-reporting-technology/605375/22 "2011-12-09T13:23:27Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > I’ll have to chime in against the hypothetical as well as the change (modern or even simply advanced communications) cuts to the very heart of why the horrible meat grinder of trench warfare happened. Radios were not portable, and while attempts were made to unspool communications wire across no-mans land they were sure to be cut by the artillery fire into no-man’s land in short order. Generals take a lot of the blame for the carnage of WW1, and while some of it is deserved, a lot of it had to do with this communication problem. Once the attackers went over the top of their trenches, there was very little generals could do to affect the outcome of the battle; the soldiers may as well have disappeared to the dark side of the moon as far as the ability to communicate with them went. All there was to do was carry out the plan and hope for the best, and as the old military adage goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy. > > \ Just to chime in on this. The lack of mobile radios and the inability of WW1 generals to actually control the battle once the troops had “gone over the top” certainly gave the Western Front its horrific shape and texture from 1915-18 but does not account for the mass casualties. Mass casualties were a consequence of total war between roughly equal states in the 20th century, not the trench warfare itself. Check out daily casualty rates suffered by German forces during Barbarossa in 1941. Depite effective field communications, during a period when they were beating the Soviets hollow, they suffered higher casualty rates than the British during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. On the OP, I don’t think the hypothetical is meaningful. If you assume a media with modern technology the whole world is different and you can’t assume anything about WW1 would be the same. Quite apart from differences in the military there are bound to be massive differences in politics and social opinion in a world with tv, the intranet, mobile phones and texting. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-wwi-be-like-with-todays-journalists-and-reporting-technology/605375/23 "2011-12-09T14:57:44Z")
I tend to think that people were just plain different then, so I’m not sure there’s any clear answer. You can give the media all the high-tech tools they can handle, but if the media have no intent to expose the horror and inhumanity of war, then the way the media might have covered World War I will bear little resemblance to how the media covered, for example, the Vietnam War. I guess the most thoughtful response is to question to what degree people are shaped by the media, and to what degree the media is shaped by the people. But taking a look how how the media a couple decades later declined to cover, for example, FDR’s physical infirmities despite the technological ability to do so, I’m less inclined to say that intense media coverage of WWI would have far reaching consequences. It’s probably be used for more feel-good patriotic stories, as others have opined. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-wwi-be-like-with-todays-journalists-and-reporting-technology/605375/24 "2011-12-09T20:25:32Z")
> [@MarcusF](#): > > Just to chime in on this. The lack of mobile radios and the inability of WW1 generals to actually control the battle once the troops had “gone over the top” certainly gave the Western Front its horrific shape and texture from 1915-18 but does not account for the mass casualties. > > Mass casualties were a consequence of total war between roughly equal states in the 20th century, not the trench warfare itself. Check out daily casualty rates suffered by German forces during Barbarossa in 1941. Depite effective field communications, during a period when they were beating the Soviets hollow, they suffered higher casualty rates than the British during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Absolutely true, the Germans took 686,000 casualties in Barbarossa from 22 June to 1 Nov 1941, 20% of their committed forces. Not to overplay this, as WW2 was still mostly an infantry war, my guess is that the particular horror associated with WW1 trench warfare was the sense of the pointlessness of it all, as very little ground was won or lost despite the most horrific casualties. From 1 July–18 November 1916 during the battle of the Somme there were over 1,000,000 casualties amongst the British, French and Germans - and the front had moved a total of 6 miles. It wouldn’t be fair to compare the speed of the advance of Barbarossa to the Somme, as Barbarossa was exceptionally fast; but on the other hand the speed of advance at the Somme was the norm on the Western Front in WW1. Then there were the repeated battles over the same slivers of ground, the 5 battles of Ypres, the 11 battles of Isonzo on the Italian-Austrian Front. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-wwi-be-like-with-todays-journalists-and-reporting-technology/605375/25 "2011-12-10T00:53:44Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > They would ignore the sinking of the Lusitania? Lusitania was sunk in 1915, and the USA didn’t enter the war until 1917. So in fact they did manage to ignore ir for quite awhile. I don’t know if people commonly realize that Lusitania wasn’t an American vessel, was carrying arms, and wasn’t the trigger that caused the United States to enter the war. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-wwi-be-like-with-todays-journalists-and-reporting-technology/605375.md?page=1)