scholarly journals ‘The silence of the Sphinx’: The delay in organising media coverage of World War II

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Allison Oosterman

None of those New Zealand men who served as official war correspondents in World War II are alive today to tell their stories. It is left to the media historian to try and piece together their lives and actions, always regretting that research had not started sooner. Sadly there is more information available about World War I and the life and actions of Malcolm Ross, the country’s first official war correspondent, than there is about New Zealand’s World War II correspondents. Nevertheless, remembering the work of these journalists is important, so this is a first attempt at chronicling the circumstances surrounding the appointment of the first of the official correspondents, John Herbert Hall and Robin Templeton Miller, for the 1939-45 conflict. The story of the appointment of men to cover the war, whether as press correspondents, photographers, artists or broadcasters, is one of ‘absurd delays’ which were not resolved until nearly two years of the war had passed.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-50
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Y. Aleshina ◽  
Mark Y. Blokh ◽  
Tatiana A. Razuvaeva ◽  
Hedwig Wagner ◽  
Anton V. Kompleev

The article is devoted to an overview of studies on the discursive embodiment of historical memory, particularly, in the media. The research is aimed at the overview and systematization of, predominantly, international and Russian concepts of historical memory in academic literature. The scientific significance of research results is determined by the possibility of clarifying the definitions of historical memory in the process of systematizing the existing overseas and domestic studies. With that, the “starting point” of historical memory in this research are global political conflicts, particularly, World War I and World War II. The focus of research interest is the memory of the world wars which is discursively expressed in modern media space with various pragmatic tasks. Analysis of media materials allows for revealing the mechanisms of using historical memory as a tool for creating assessment and images while covering World War I and World War II. The research makes it possible to obtain a general discursive picture of the mass consciousness and, what is especially, important, to get specific data on the linguistic “content” of historical memory reflected in online media. The article is addressed to researchers in various fields of the Humanities, journalists and a wide circle of readers who are interested in the problem.


Author(s):  
David C. Rapoport

The Versailles Treaty ending World War I established a new international order by creating the League of Nations and, dividing the defeated empires in Europe into a number of nation-states. The overseas empires of the defeated became League of Nations mandates, which the victorious powers administered until they were sufficiently developed for “self -determination.” Ironically, the first terrorist campaign began in a victorious power’s territory when the Irish Republican Army produced the first success in global terrorist history though it did gain all territory sought. Campaigns emerged then in other mandates and overseas territories of the victorious powers but all failed. But the Atlantic Charter drawn in World War II made the self-determination principle more obligatory by pledging that the imperial territories of the defeated powers would be freed immediately. When the war was over, the victorious powers often dissembled portions of their empires. Elements not freed largely contained conflicting ethnic elements unable to agree on how to be governed. Successful terrorist campaigns materialized in those territories, and the wave ended when the energies of governments not terrorists dissipated! But most successes were incomplete because bloody tensions between ethnic divisions in the new states persisted. Important terrorist decisions helped their causes. The First Wave’s language tactics, strategy, and targets were changed and helped terrorists get less offensive media coverage and significant support from the international world, particularly the United Nations. They now described themselves as “freedom fighters” not terrorists. Assassination occurred rarely, violence was restricted to local territories and efforts to cooperate with group were abandoned. The police were the principal civilian element attacked, and warnings about attacks were often given to other civilians enabling them to seek safety.


Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.


Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex examines how the American military has used cinema and related visual, sonic, and mobile technologies to further its varied aims. The essays in this book address the way cinema was put to work for purposes of training, orientation, record keeping, internal and external communication, propaganda, research and development, tactical analysis, surveillance, physical and mental health, recreation, and morale. The contributors examine the technologies and types of films that were produced and used in collaboration among the military, film industry, and technology manufacturers. The essays also explore the goals of the American state, which deployed the military and its unique modes of filmmaking, film exhibition, and film viewing to various ends. Together, the essays reveal the military’s deep investment in cinema, which began around World War I, expanded during World War II, continued during the Cold War (including wars in Korea and Vietnam), and still continues in the ongoing War on Terror.


Author(s):  
Mark Franko

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.


Author(s):  
Eric Weisbard

This chapter considers the role played by radio in popularizing and defining country music. Radio as a format pursued a commercially driven mediation of identity that worked against applying an artistically driven musical genre definition. In particular, these debates revolved around gendered presentation and women as listeners and performers. From the 1920s through World War II, radio’s prominence in country turned on live radio shows as the media introduction of southern whites. A second era, from the end of the war to mid-1970s, saw a shift to disc jockeys and records: personality radio. Format radio country, a tighter programming approach, solidified from the mid-1970s to the mega mergers of the late 1990s. Most recently, in an era of Internet access and new business models for music, country has confronted the less sympathetic position of networked radio.


2019 ◽  
pp. 096777201987609
Author(s):  
Liam McLoughlin

Dr Joseph Dudley ‘Benjy’ Benjafield qualified from University College Hospital Medical School, London in 1912. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I and was in charge of the 37th Mobile Bacteriological Laboratory serving with the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force when the Spanish flu struck in late 1918. He observed the features and clinical course of the pandemic and published his findings in the British Medical Journal in 1919. On return to civilian life, he was appointed as Consultant physician to St George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London where he remained in practice for the rest of his career. He was a respected amateur gentleman racing driver frequently racing at the Brooklands circuit from 1924 after buying a Bentley 3-litre and entering the Le Mans 24 h race seven times between 1925 and 1935, winning in 1927. He was one of an elite club of young men known as The Bentley Boys and went on to become a founding member of the British Racing Drivers Club (BRDC) in 1927. He rejoined the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II, serving briefly again in Egypt. He died in 1957.


2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. E5
Author(s):  
Prateeka Koul ◽  
Christine Mau ◽  
Victor M. Sabourin ◽  
Chirag D. Gandhi ◽  
Charles J. Prestigiacomo

World War I advanced the development of aviation from the concept of flight to the use of aircraft on the battlefield. Fighter planes advanced technologically as the war progressed. Fighter pilot aces Francesco Baracca and Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) were two of the most famous pilots of this time period. These courageous fighter aces skillfully maneuvered their SPAD and Albatros planes, respectively, while battling enemies and scoring aerial victories that contributed to the course of the war. The media thrilled the public with their depictions of the heroic feats of fighter pilots such as Baracca and the Red Baron. Despite their aerial prowess, both pilots would eventually be shot down in combat. Although the accounts of their deaths are debated, it is undeniable that both were victims of traumatic head injury.


2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Setran

AbstractIn the years between World War I and World War II in the United States, public and religious educators engaged in an extended struggle to define the appropriate nature of character education for American youth. Within a post-war culture agonizing over the sanctions of moral living in the wake of mass violence and vanishing certitudes, a group of conservative educators sought to shore up traditional values through the construction of morality codes defining the characteristics of the “good American.” At the same time, a group of liberal progressive educators set forth a vigorous critique of these popular character education programs. This article analyzes the nature of this liberal critique by looking at one leading liberal spokesperson, George Albert Coe. Coe taught at Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, and used his platform in these institutions to forge a model of character education derived from the combined influences of liberal Protestantism and Deweyan progressive education. Coe posited a two-pronged vision for American moral education rooted in the need for both procedural democracy (collaborative moral decision making) and a democratic social order. Utilizing this vision of the “democracy of God,” Coe demonstrated the inadequacies of code-based models, pointing in particular to the anachronism of traditional virtues in a world of social interdependence, the misguided individualism of the virtues, and the indoctrinatory nature of conservative programs. He proposed that youth be allowed to participate in moral experimentation, adopting ideals through scientific testing rather than unthinking allegiance to authoritative commands. Expanding the meaning of morality to include social as well as personal righteousness, he also made character education a vehicle of social justice. In the end, I contend that Coe's democratic model of character education, because of its scientific epistemological hegemony and devaluing of tradition, actually failed to promote a truly democratic character.


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