Loose Lips Sink Ships

Excerpts from The History of Soviet America, (London: Penguin, 1975)
_A university level history textbook, groundbreaking in its atypical neutral tone, and use of both internal and external sources to discuss the history of the UASR. It went out of print following the 1979 crisis and faded from popular consciousness before the advent of mass internet culture. Its subsequent rediscovery as a curiosity from the era of détente led to renewed interest, and an expanded second edition, covering the years following 1975, was announced.

Chapter VI: The impact of the Revolution on Journalism_

No essential liberty was more affected by the growth of trusts than freedom of press. As the rate of newspaper ownership concentration increased, the editorial independence and political pluralism in the press became more and more curtailed.

The swelling of the phenomenon of “yellow journalism”, the unethical practice of newspapers presenting news with little or no legitimate, well-researched articles instead seeking to pursue eye-catching headlines for increased sales, was also a particular trend of the news industry of the late Second Republic.

In the period before the Red May Revolution, the Daily Worker was officially owned and operated by the Workers’ Communist Party. However, influenced by the industrial unionism of the Solidarity Federation, the newspaper developed a program of co-determination that allowed workers to elect representatives to the board of managers which would be responsible for setting wages and limited benefits, along with selecting the heads for the various departments, such as editorial, printing and circulation. Although far from the concept of worker control, it went further than the traditional model of the publisher-owner being responsible for the contents of the newspaper and hiring of the staff members.

[…]

The aftermath of the civil war disrupted the flow of logistics and transportation, though as the Red forces liberated new territories the Daily Worker followed in the weeks afterwards. In the months after the final victory in Washington DC, the Daily Worker was effectively the only newspaper with national circulation, though it’s publications outside of its traditional strongholds of Metropolis and Chicago did not exceed more than four thousand copies.

Under the compromise to kickstart the economic recovery, practical concessions were made to allow private enterprise within limited spheres. One of these spheres was the press, though it would be considerably affected by the Labor Relations Act of 1934.
The clause of universal unionization effectively implemented a nationwide system of co-determination, though many newspapers such as the liberal-conservative Chicago Daily Tribune would implement a more bargaining-centered approach rather than a full managerial system. Other newspapers, such as William Hearst’s media conglomerate, was broken up and its individual newspapers collectivized. Local newspapers would be fully collectivized though private ownership also dominated in isolated rural communities, particularly in the infamous sundown towns.

The New York Times would rebound from the losses of the civil war and become entrenched in a struggle with the Daily Worker to become the nation’s newspaper of record. However, though it lost its dominant position at home, the New York Times would compensate for its losses with an increase in international sales, as readership in liberal states perceived the Times as a more reliable news source on American affairs.

The Revolt of the Cadres would cripple this state of compromise, which would limp along until the 1950s, with many media enterprises socialized into worker cooperatives. The party-approved management of the Daily Worker would be replaced by an entire new slate in internal elections as the newspaper evolved from a party-owned media into an increasingly independent worker-owned news collective. The publication of the secret agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 would be an important moment in the newspapers’ pursuit for editorial independence.

Excerpts from Secrets of Victory: The American Press and Radio in the Great Revolutionary War[1]

The political repression that the SLPA suffered during the Biennio Rosso, the reversal of censorship during the First Cultural Revolution and the Revolt of the Cadres had made outright censorship politically untenable. However, the All-Union Government had engaged in various forms of censorship in the years leading up the war.

The intervention in the Spanish Civil War had the effect of making many journalists withhold information about VOSCOM troop movements. A more overt case of censorship was the closing of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Batumi biographical play based on the early life of Joseph Stalin by Culture Secretariat Louise Bryant, which led to the resignation of Hallie Flanagan as head of Public Theatre on July 13th, 1939.

In fact, the suppression of information relating to the Yezhovshchina in the Soviet Union would result in the establishment of a commission by American public intellectuals, journalists and lawyers on June 28th, 1937 to investigate the role of the Party in press censorship. The commission’s 1939 report would not be published until more than ten years later but it would be used as the foundation for the Office of Press Coordination.

As radio broadcasters, newspapers and newsreels were the primary ways Americans received information about national and international events, the OPC sought to achieve the suppression of information through a voluntary regulatory code.

The Wartime Practices Code for the American Press, published just after the declaration of war in 1940, was the culmination of a series of policies previously enacted both by the government as well the news media.

Secrecy was particularly vital in regards to nuclear research, with the People’s Secretariat of Defense setting up an Advisory Committee on Uranium and Neutrons in early May 1939.

Likewise many American newspapers started to self-censor in regards to military matters

[…]

Some of the elements of the Code of Wartime Practices varied from the medium to medium, depending on whether it’s character was national or international. Radio broadcasts were a specific target of the Wartime Code as it created a list of suggestions based on specialized knowledge to prevent information leaks. Some[2] of the provisions for broadcasters include:

• That they should refrain from reporting any news related to the results of weather phenomena unless specifically authorized to do so by the OPC;
• No reporting on the deployment or type of troops in movement within or without the continental United Republics, including troops of friendly nations. Exception for troops in training camps or in domestic deployment;
• No reporting on damage by enemy land or sea attacks;
• No reporting on the movements of personal, material or other activities in commercial airlines;
• No reports on military bases or fortifications, their nature and number;
• No report on statistical information which would disclose the amounts of strategic or critical materials produced, imported or in reserve, such as tin, rubber, aluminium, uranium, rinc, chromium, manganese, tungsten, silk, platinium, cork, quinine, copper, optical glasses, mercury and high octane gasoline amongst others;
• No reports on rumors or unconfirmed reports that might be accepted as facts by readers. Likewise no reporting on enemy propaganda or material calculated by the enemy to bring about division among the members of VOSCom.

[1] The title is based on the real-life book Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II by Michael S. Sweeney. The actual excerpts though are completely original content.
[2] Not going to include the whole text as it is quite extensive, based on the real-life Code of Wartime Practises *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation