The end of the Great War, the monumental struggle that dissolved four European empires and that left more than thirty-seven million total casualties, came on November eleventh 1918 at 11:00 A.M. French time. A soldier remembered glancing at his watch at precisely eleven and noted that after months of continuous bombardment and uninterrupted noise, "there came a second of unexpected silence, and then a curious rippling sound, which observers far behind the front likened to the noise of a light wind. It was the sound of men cheering from the Vosges to the sea." (1)
The end of hostilities marked a period of significant change in the international arena and the subsequent Paris Peace Conference of 1919 reshaped the territorial boundaries of Western Europe and effaced old imperial powers. (2) Representatives who gathered in Paris to interpose new forms of world order amid the ruins and carnage of the war gave birth to a great political drama. These dignitaries attempted to avoid a falling-out among the major victorious powers, to disperse with the old order and to support the struggle of new nations to win their independence. (3)
To insure adequate press coverage of the peace conference, approximately five hundred special newspaper correspondents arrived in Paris at very great expense to cover this event. (4) The emphasis placed on the print media, and the then-current assumption of the integrity of the print journalists, influenced how contemporary European and American newspapers presented the negotiations at Paris and how European and American readers understood those negotiations. (5)
Correspondents regarded the Paris Peace Conference as the greatest diplomatic event of their generation and understood that the negotiations would ultimately affect the lives of millions of people across the globe. Their persistence in acquiring information through open access ultimately affected the course of the negotiations at Paris. (6) Indeed it was probably the presence of the press, and the possible influence offered by the participating politicians, that doomed the Conference to operate within the realm of censorship and secret negotiations and thus determined the context of the final peace treaties.
This study will consider the types of material, and the presentation of that material, that appeared in the print media following the end of World War I, focusing on a close examination of the coverage of the Paris Peace Conference. The analysis will integrate some basic sociological theory of the notion of society shaped by the media and will underscore the ways in which journalistic bias defined the events surrounding the end of the Great War. (7) The paper concludes that newspaper accounts, and the perspectives that journalists created to support the necessity for war, helped define the viewpoints and attitudes of American, French and British societies at the conclusion of hostilities.
Discerning the influence of the news media on any society and the impact this medium has had on an understanding of political, social, and international issues requires some recognition of the theories behind mass media bias. Christopher Lasch has argued that because the media chooses to manipulate public opinion, reporters do this not by providing untruths, but instead, by recreating the truth through a culturally supported view. (8) Emil Pain described this phenomena as the "militarization of the mass consciousness" and cited, for example, how the Russian press regenerated their "official" reports during the 1994 and 1999-2000 campaign in the Chechen Republic. (9)
Print media has long been used to promote particular views of a country, culture, or political process, and is not absent from specific influences. The use of information to manipulate personal perspectives is often uncontested, based on the assertion that if it is printed, it must be a truthful representation of what has occurred. (10)
This assumption influenced the social climate of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Daniel Smith noted that prior to World War I, Americans were being swayed by editorials depicting Germany as a potential enemy of the United States. (11) For example, the New York Times envisioned Germany as a hostile nation, thus requiring an American navy of at least comparable size. (12) From 1898 the U.S. periodical press occasionally printed articles expressing suspicion of Germany's expansionist tendencies. Munsey's Magazine in March 1901, featured a comparison of American and German navies and called for greater naval preparations to cooperate with Great Britain in meeting the German challenge in the western hemisphere. (13) These kinds of perceptions would restrict American diplomats at Paris.
The influence of the press to promote national or political viewpoints can be seen within the pages of the Times of London. Throughout the war, the newspaper used positive rhetoric to support the actions of British forces: "The brilliant operation of General Allenby in Syria and General Marshall in Mesopotamia has brought Turkey to her knees. On October 30, the final blow was given to Turkish military prestige by the surrender of 7,000 Turks on the Tigris, 50 miles south of Mosul." (14)
A similar example from The New York Times detailed the long range artillery attack upon an important German communication system which ran through Luxembourg. (15) Through the use of beneficial phraseology, the newspaper indicated that "Anyone familiar with the destructive power of big guns knows what will happen when the mammoth shells from these guns fall on a road bed." (16) The following day, readers learned of an assault 15 miles north of Verdun, where "we have driven a wedge into the heart of the German position, our advance reaching nearly four miles at some points. Three thousand prisoners have been counted and many machine guns." (17)
In France, it was the corps of journalists who provided daily updates from the Front. These correspondents also proved most influential in the decision to hold the conference in its capital city. Le Temps, a centrist, nationalist publication, editorialized within its "Bulletin Du Jour" that among all cities Paris should be chosen because France had "borne the heaviest and bloodiest share of the war." (18) Since Versailles had been the "cradle of the German Empire, it should also be its grave." (19)
However, because of the city's notoriety, Colonel Edward M. House, President Wilson's personal representative in Europe, agreed to accept Paris as the location for mediation only after Premier Georges Clemenceau (20) assured him that the city would assume a neutral climate during deliberations. (21) House's reasoning was simple: Paris is the capital of France, the center of French politics, and the originating and disseminating points for public opinion, especially through the press. Hardly another nation possessed such a concentration of facilities for spreading propaganda and sentiment. (22) Even Stephane Lauzanne, editor of Le Matin, referred to the complexities of Paris as a "snare for uninformed journalists." The city appeared as an unreliable semblance of "rumors, of gossip, of talkers and faultfinders" to the unsuspecting reporters...."Truly, a misguided person the newspaper man who listens too much and does not think enough." (23)