Censorship During Ww2

On the beach in Normandy on June 6th, 1944, Robert Capa clutches his camera as the Allied forces huddle around him, awaiting their arrival. The boat crashes on the beach, and the soldiers sprint forward clutching their guns, and Capa runs forward clutching his camera. Capa was one of many photographers who risked their lives for photographs, only for his photos to become censored by the government. To garner support for the war effort, President Franklin DeNalo Roosevelt, developed a censorship process to maintain a squeaky-clean photographic image of the United States. These strict laws prevented Americans from seeing the realities of war and American soldiers' actions on the front lines. FDR took a risk and removed some censorship laws to

Since FDR joined the war, censorship was not needed to gain support, but rather to maintain the support he already had acquired. Organizations such as the Public Relations Administration, Office of Emergency Management, as well as the Office of Censorship were key in establishing the laws that had been put in place during WWI. These laws could not have “any subject that would give the enemy useful information” and “could not depict subjects that would affect the ‘morale’ of either the soldiers or the homefront, which meant that photographs could not depict wounded or dead Americans, wrecked airplanes or other U.S. materiel, or even soldiers in improper uniform.” Some historians believe that these laws prevented Americans from seeing the brutal reality of war and are a violation of their First Amendment rights. These rules also were for the safety of the American soldiers, meaning the photographs could not reveal any intel that wasn’t already public. Since photographs couldn’t harm the morale of soldiers, this led Americans to have a clean and positive image during the

The unprecedented access granted to news outlets in warzones during WWII revolutionized war photography, simultaneously challenged traditional censorship practices and allowed Americans to form more informed opinions about the realities of war. The outlets were allowed under the condition that they had to join the “Still Picture Pool.” This pool was an organization of all the media outlets that were required to pool their photos together and any outlet in the group could use any photo taken by any photographer. Members included Life, Associated Press, Acme, and International News Photos, all of whom shared photographs. This was unprecedented for the time, because news outlets had been allowed minimal to no coverage of the war, and this allowed Americans to see photographs from sources other than the government. However, what they heard and saw wasn’t always the full story, as the creation of the Still Picture Pool was to streamline the process of censorship. The pool was created so the government wouldn’t have to worry about censoring multiple different sources, but rather, censoring a group of photos that all people could