D-Day Reporting from WWII

This blog isn't very active now, because we are in the process of moving site to a new host, but over this weekend, on a long-drive, I had the opportunity to listen to several hours of the NBC report of the D-Day invasion of Europe during WWII. I was impressed by several difference from reporting today. The most noticeable was that the reporters actually had a working knowledge of basic strategic principles and worked to explain them to their audience. For example, during the report, they reported the importance of secrecy and misinformation in war. They got their initial reports of the event from the German news agencies who reported it before Allied forces made the official announcement of the invasions. NBC credited the Germans with accurate reporting of the initial events, but pointed out to the audience that this good information was likely setting the audience us for misinformation during later parts of the battle. They explained why the Allied forces didn't give away their plans beforehand. When they started receiving reports of fierce fighting from a German counter attack, they even explained that those reports were unlikely to be accurate (they weren't) because reports of fighting tended to be exaggerated early on and STRATEGICALLY it usually takes about two or three days to mount a strong counter attack. This kind of depth and insight about how to report unfolding events in war is completely lost today. Of course, also lost is the presses use of the pronoun "our" in decribing the battle and the constant reminders of the importance of the war despite its costs.