The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1943-07-29

1t is common to find folks who know
| something about what's going on III
this flea bitten world growing about
lousy newspaper coverage or both the
military and political aspects OF war
Coverage of the military aspect Is,
| in a great part of the field except the
"eye witness" realm, none to good.
| Coverage of the political aspect is
just about nOn-eNistent as far as any
intelligent work is concerned.
But when you put down all of the
sins of omission and commission on the
| part of the newspaper fraternity, the
stark and startling fact remains that
of all the sinners on both counts, the
movies take all prizes for bOObyhatch
| work
| And where do the movies fall hard
est? In the news reels
We've had some corking good fic-
tionalized war pictures, but in the
realm of news pictures, with the big
gest news event of all time cracking
all over the world, the movies give us
at best a dab here and there.
Patrons have to sit through minutes
of blab and blah "trailers' which tell
how great is the Coming attraction
They'll show plenty of Miss Dill Pickle
Week Queen and of this and that
tripery stuff.
And then a feeting shot or two Of
the war, in which the very life of
every last patron is involved - and,
ladies and gentlemen, you may now
go home and relaX-or go home and
get sore as hell at this downright
cheating.
If Il new politician gets a job in
Washington, the news reels show his
shop-worn mug as he reads, none too
well, a bit of blurb written by the
press agent to whom he fell heir when
he took his new job.
You see plenty of that kind of stuff.
But the war? This amazing war? Oh,
yes, ii shot here and there, almost as
an after thought.
| Maybe Washington has reasons for
not wanting us to see the war? Is
that it?
| But if the politicos only knew it,
better than any propaganda picture of
war is the real thing itself.
| Men and women all over the country
could be brought to 4 realization which
they do not now possess that this is
THEIR own very personal war, If
the news reels would give down with
plenty of stuff right from the front
That the pictures are taken is Of
course the fact. Miles of them.
That only Il dribble ever gets to that
white eXpanse fatously called the
silver screen is obvious to every patron
of the movies
| Whether it's Will Hays or Elmer
Davis is beside the point. Or whether
it's the movie industry itself - that
also is beside the point
The point is that Il job so lame and
ineXcusable is being done that the
wonder is the wellin doesn't ring from
coast to coast in Indignation.
! 1t can't be censorship entirely, be-
cause after so long everything can be
told and pictured without benefit to
the enemy.
The big dramatic sweep of the war
| just hasn't caught the movies at all.
Nor has the job Ernie Pyle has done
SO outstandingly for the newspapers
| had its counterpart, or even Il minor
counterfeit of it, in the movies
Is it because of the awesome ma gni-
tude of the conflict? Maybe that has
something to do with it. But that does
SO it can't be that, although that could
have something to do with the lament
able failure of the newspapers to do
their job properly, especially in the
realm of the political phases of the
war.
OF course one thing we do know and
that is that wherever there is cen
SorShip, as there is for movies, news
| papers and radio, certain fair haired
boys will pull their punches and reef
their sails so as to play safe with the
| cenSOrS. Yes, more than that, so as
to snuggle up to the powers that be-
which means more than merely play
ing safe.
Perhaps, in Il way, censorship is in
part defeating its own purposes in this
imagination-s staggering contest between
| light and dark-CAIW