Office of Censorship
[1] The efforts of the Office of Censorship to balance the protection of sensitive war related information with the constitutional freedoms of the press is considered largely successful.
[3] Radio broadcasts, newspapers, and newsreels were the primary ways Americans received their information about World War II and therefore were the medium most affected by the Office of Censorship code.
In response to the threat of war, branches in the United States government that explicitly regulated censorship popped up within the Military and Navy.
[6] The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, caused the official entry of America into World War II and the reorganizing of government activities responsible for censoring communication in and out of the United States.
The First War Powers Act, passed on December 18, 1941,[7] contained broad grants of Executive authority, including a provision on censorship.
[8] On December 19, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion.
It also authorized the director to establish a Censorship Operating Board that would bring together other government agencies to deal with issues of communication interception.
[2] To effect closer coordination of censorship activities during the war effort, representatives of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States signed an agreement providing for the complete exchange of information among all concerned parties.
The voluntary nature of censorship relieved many broadcasters, which had expected that war would cause the government to seize all stations and draft their employees into the army.
As an experienced journalist who disliked having to act as censor, he feared that a nationwide takeover of radio would result in a permanent government monopoly.
Radio stations had to discontinue programs with audience participation and man on the street interviews because of the risk that an enemy agent might use the microphone.
From January 15, 1942 to October 12, 1943 broadcasters said nothing about rain, snow, fog, wind, air pressure, temperature, or sunshine unless it was approved by the Weather Bureau.
After Memphis, Tennessee stations could not discuss tornadoes that killed hundreds in March 1942, the code was changed to permit emergency bulletins but only if approved by the office.
When he toured war factories around the country for two weeks in September 1942, for example, only three wire service reporters accompanied him on the private railroad car Ferdinand Magellan.
While the majority of reporters supported voluntarily censoring themselves over such travel, Roosevelt also used the code to hide frequent weekend trips to Springwood Estate and, some believed, the meetings with former lover Lucy Rutherford that began again in 1944.
[5]: 198–200 [16] Perhaps the worst press violation occurred in August 1944, when due to procedural errors a nationwide Mutual Network broadcast mentioned the military creating a weapon in Pasco, Washington involving atom splitting.
The reporter, who had heard rumors while vacationing in New Mexico, described a secret project in Los Alamos, calling it "Uncle Sam's mystery town directed by '2nd Einstein'", J. Robert Oppenheimer.
It speculated that the project was working on chemical warfare, powerful new explosives, or a beam that would cause German aircraft engines to fail.
It wrote that the bomb was built in "three 'hidden cities' with a total population of 100,000 inhabitants", Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington; as press officer, Laurence had visited each major facility.
"None of the people, who came to these developments from homes all the way from Maine to California, had the slightest idea of what they were making in the gigantic Government plants they saw around them", the Times said.
