Voices from the Air by Tony Hill

Author:Tony Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

For Christ’s sake George! – Army Public Relations

Tensions within GHQ between MacArthur’s office and the Australian command now played a part in a fresh row with Army PR. Colonel Rasmussen complained to the ABC of the effect on soldiers in the field of inaccurate statements supposedly from Marien and Haydon Lennard using ‘imaginative descriptions fabricated at a great distance from the scene of the action’.55 Rasmussen claimed that Army PR and command officers in the field were ‘most anxious to establish the reliability and authenticity of the ABC news broadcasts’.56

As Chester Wilmot had found with some of his fellow war correspondents in the Middle East, exaggeration and inaccuracy could destroy the credibility of a correspondent with the troops, and with Army command. Rasmussen complained to the ABC about reports by Marien and Lennard describing 2000-feet-high, ten-feet-wide razor-backed ridges and deep mud on the battlefield around Sattelberg on the Huon Peninsula. In September, at the time of the original complaints about Lennard’s reports from GHQ, Marien had written to the Federal news editor, Frank Dixon (the underlinings are Marien’s) – ‘There have been inaccuracies but we are not the only offenders. Everyone who is represented at GHQ shares in them . . . Lennard is definitely not at fault.’57 The ABC accepted the need to specify in broadcasts whether a correspondent was reporting from the field or from GHQ, but it also identified GHQ as the source of the inaccuracies. It pointed to almost identical descriptions of Sattelberg in the newspapers which, like Marien and Lennard, had taken their information from GHQ and official sources. Bill Marien got his information about ten-feet-wide ridges from the deputy assistant director of public relations in the field, George Fenton, who had also censored his copy. In a confrontation at the field HQ, Marien rounded on Fenton: ‘For Christ’s sake, George, don’t give me that. Do you think I just airily picked the distance of ten feet out of the air?’58 Fenton acknowledged his own liability in censoring the copy.

Warren Denning was filling in as News editor during an absence by Frank Dixon and warned Deamer of the broader background to the row.

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