The Media Offensive by Alexander G. Lovelace

Author:Alexander G. Lovelace [Alexander G. Lovelace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2022-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Master, the Master Plan, and the Unmastered Press

On June 12, Eisenhower, accompanied by Henry Arnold, Ernest King, and George Marshall, landed in Normandy. They were met by Bradley and a gaggle of reporters. King angrily turned to Eisenhower and demanded to know why the correspondents were present.154 At least one of the photographers was also nonplused and recalled being told what was each general’s “good side” to photograph.155 It must have worked since Butcher received a request at 2:00 a.m. the next morning to release the photos, and reported that the “correspondents are delighted with their stories, although the London papers played the contemporary visit of the P.M. to Monty and mostly overlooked that of General Ike and party.”156 The day before, Ernie Pyle and other American correspondents had complained to Bradley about the BBC bias toward the British forces. Bradley promised to speak to Eisenhower or Churchill about the problem.157 This alleged British press favoritism can be considered the opening shot of a press battled waged between the Allied correspondents. Since the real battle of Normandy quickly devolved into a stalemate, the media would deploy plenty of criticism. This, in turn, filtered back into commanders’ actions in Normandy.

Since Bradley was at the center of both conflicts, his relationship with the media merits some attention. Like Eisenhower, Bradley fits well into Brian Linn’s “Manager” category, and historians have generally viewed the homely and modest Bradley as the antithesis to the showy and publicity-hungry Patton. One recent biographer has even gone so far as to claim that Bradley “did not seek out publicity as others had done” and that “his life has been neglected largely because most media outlets dubbed him unexciting or mundane.”158 Yet, if the reminiscences of reporters are any guide, Bradley was extremely well regarded by the press.159 The cynical Joe Liebling of the staid New Yorker allegedly claimed, “Bradley was the greatest man after Christ to hit this world.”160 “The outstanding figure on this western front is Lt. Gen. Omar Nelson Bradley,” Ernie Pyle wrote in September 1944. “He is so modest and sincere that he probably will not get his proper credit, except in military textbooks.”161 Indeed, fear that Bradley’s apparent disinterest in publicity would damage his place in posterity was as much a part of the Bradley legend as the “GI General.” But the legend conceals one of the most adroit handlers of the press in World War II. As veteran-turned-scholar Paul Fussell observes, “Bradley . . . seemed entirely homespun and guileless, but he equipped himself with a public-relations staff as able as any.”162 The most important of these was Chester B. Hansen, a former reporter himself, whose wife worked at Time magazine.163 Bradley’s own wife was close friends with Mary Margaret McBride of NBC.164 After the war, Bradley admitted that Hansen was useful as a “public relations officer, and he soon became acquainted with all the correspondents that were with our headquarters. He found out what they were thinking, what they wanted to know.

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