War News: Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War - Paperback

by Brayton Harris (Author)

WAR NEWS (originally published in 1999 as Blue & Gray in Black & White) is an exploration of the individual and collective efforts of newspaper journalists during the Civil War. As eyewitnesses to one of the most memorable conflicts in history, they left a record that is sometimes brilliant but, at other times, marred by shoddy journalism, sensationalism, and self-serving reporting. They were, however, the American public's primary source of information about the battles that were tearing the nation apart. This book focuses on the personalities, politics, and rivalries of editors; the efforts of newspapers to influence military appointments, strategy, and tactics; advances in printing technology; formal and informal censorship, the suppression of dissident newspapers, and, most of all, the war correspondents themselves.

Author Biography

BRAYTON HARRIS is a retired US Navy captain who served as a media coordinator in Vietnam and as a special assistant to the secretary of the Navy at the Pentagon. He has also been a printer, a publisher, and an editor, and is the author of more than two hundred articles and ten books, including The Age of the Battleship: 1890-1922 and The Navy Times Book of Submarines: A Political, Social, and Military History.