War correspondents

war correspondents

Written by

Elisabeth Fondren

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

War correspondents provide accurate, reliable, and firsthand reports of armed conflicts, military operations and strategies, and the war’s impact on civilian home fronts. These journalists are stationed in conflict zones or distant battlefields and perform a central role in helping the public follow, visualize, and understand past and present conflicts. War reporters access frontlines, cultivate sources, gather a wide range of perspectives (from authorities, noncombatants, and expert observers), and share their news with audiences all over the world. This type of reporting produces live footage, interviews, and close-up pictures of war that are usually outside of the reach of ordinary citizens. The work of war correspondents is both difficult and challenging.

War correspondents are impacted by the location and sociopolitical environments in which they operate, external and psychological pressures, and are expected to meet tight deadlines while engaging across multimedia platforms. Throughout the history of journalism, war correspondents have been jailed as spies or held back by military or police. Scholars of media and conflicts have documented governments’ firm censorship efforts and goals to control information in the interest of security versus journalists difficulties to provide comprehensive, let alone objective coverage of wars. The question of how journalists source information in times of national crisis has been subject of much debate. Over the past 200 years, the practice of war correspondence has evolved due to changes in technology, military-media relations, including self-censorship, and embedding practices. The job description is fluid but questions of access, balance, ethical responsibilities and the materiality of portraying human conflict, suffering, and death remain part of the job. In the digital age, changes and expansions in the use of technology, video livestreaming, multimedia platforms, and the rise of participant and citizen journalism have further impacted the work and demands of war correspondents.

This entry offers an introduction to the history and practice of war correspondence and reviews the biographies of noted American war correspondents from the mid-1900s up to the present.

History of Reporting War and Early Pioneers

Historians have chronicled conflicts long before the concept of journalism was clearly defined. Athenian general Thucydides covered the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bce) and was perhaps the first participant-observer and correspondent reporting on a long and divisive battle. In the modern era, correspondents were commissioned by British newspapers to cover the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (1789–1815). In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, journalists did not routinely cover battles as frontline correspondents. Instead, they gathered information from soldiers’ letters, printed correspondence, other newspapers, and gossip. The practice of war reporting came of age during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), when American newspapers—the primary vehicle of mass information—assigned full-time correspondents to cover military action. News from the battlefront was relayed via horseback, steamboat, and telegraph lines to American cities by reporters such as George Wilkins Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune or Jane McManus Storms Cazneau of the New York Sun. Scholars have noted that the rise of the commercial and penny press newspapers accelerated the need for war reporting in the mid- to late-1840s.

During the Crimean War (1853–1856), the British military practiced rigid censorship of all battlefield news, and information was held back or not allowed to be published, which caused criticism among newspapers in London. In the United States, the American Civil War (1861–1865) was a turning point for military warfare, technology, the role of visual media, and war reporting. Black and white photographs became an important element of recording horrific battles as well as soldiers’ frontline experiences. In the 19th century, before the notion of journalistic objectivity or detachment was practiced, journalists engaged in advocacy and often shared partisan opinions and propaganda. By the 1890s, the golden era of wartime correspondence, professional reporters such as Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916) were widely known, and there was minimal pressure and military restriction on what to write and publish. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was a unique precursor to later 20th-century propaganda and information wars. In their goal to shape the news, Japanese censors delayed and regulated correspondents access to news and used a pool system to share official information.

First World War and Second World War

By the start of World War I (1914–1918), the global public knew what a war correspondent was. At the onset of the conflict in August 1914, all British correspondents were banned from the fronts and the documentary of events was left to members of the military staff. In 1915, pressured by politicians and influential newspaper owners, the British government loosened its restrictions and allowed correspondents on the battlefields. American correspondents had covered the conflict from the start of the war. Some scholars have contended that American and British correspondents during the Great War served as an extension of the national propaganda efforts. Press historians have also chronicled the rise of women correspondents during the Great War, the unique challenges of female war correspondents, and their complex relationship to both authorities and audiences. In World War II (1939–1945) American radio journalists, who had covered the fighting during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), rose to new prominence but also faced stricter military censorship due to the medium’s immediate and widespread distribution. Most famously, CBS radio journalist Edward R. Murrow was reporting from the rooftops during the London blitz raids. Murrow and his team of reporters, referred to as the Murrow Boys, followed in the footsteps of previous influential war journalists and correspondents and set a new standard for modern war journalists.

Wars in Korea and Vietnam

The Korean War (1950–1953) and Vietnam War (1959–1975) changed the relationship between military officials, government information officers, and war correspondents. Scholarship has found that journalists covering the Korean War continued to exercise self-censorship, which often meant leaving out the grim realities or photographs of combat. The Vietnam War influenced the professional ethos of journalists, as they became participant-observers. News from correspondents in Vietnam hardened antigovernment attitudes and public criticism of then-president Lyndon Johnson. In the following years, military-press relations were at an all-time low and the military restricted journalists reporting from invasions in Central America in the 1980s.

Explore Britannica Premium!

The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.

Gulf and Iraq Wars

The Gulf War (1990–1991) and Iraq War (2003–2011) marked the return of restricted access and the embedding of journalists with combat troops. In their effort to manage the perception of war and breaking news, military limited access to frontlines and journalists could no longer report with absolute autonomy. Military public affairs’ staff embraced publicity efforts to engage and embed journalists and to sustain supportive media coverage. Independence, in turn, became a new hallmark for journalists who had to work with but often around official sources to verify information and provide a balanced picture. During the first Gulf War, CNN provided 24/7 live coverage of the war and became an immediate source for international viewers. People could watch the war unfold in almost real-time. Some journalists did not accept this restricted access policy. They wandered around and reported from enemy warzones without military protection. In the case of CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, he and his crew were jailed, which in turn created chilling effects for other journalists. During the beginning of the Iraq War, many journalists shared promilitary stances in favor of the U.S.-led invasion and commentators on cable news perpetuated the myth of widespread weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist, as U.N. inspectors concluded.

Elements and Demands of the Job

Together with foreign correspondence, some observers consider war correspondence to be the most difficult type of journalism. War correspondents have excelled at their job and received many Pulitzer Prizes and awards for their critical work. Reporting from war zones is dangerous and includes psychological, emotional, and physical costs that may impact correspondents for the rest of their lives.

War reporters perform a critical function through their eye-witnessing role that renders authority and proof during battles. From a cultural and theoretical perspective, historians of film, photography, and the press have also studied the significance of photography for memory and truth in war. James Carey (1987) argued that eyewitness accounts may be perceived as truth, but these perspectives are quick, subjective and incomplete (p. xxix). Scholars have suggested that the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 were a turning for reporting on conflict and correspondents increasingly became part of the story.

Modern Forms of War Correspondence

In the digital age, freelance war correspondents have become an important source for news in addition to traditional reporters. These freelancers work across media platforms and mainstream news networks use their content, which raises questions of risk-transfer but also authenticity. Scholarship on conflict reporting and social media curation has found that people living amid armed conflicts increasingly act as microbloggers and contribute to warblogs. The widespread use of mobile phones and social media make it harder to restrict information from wars and conflict zones. In the 21st century, new types of warfare, global terrorism, and wars in Afghanistan and Syria have also added new risks and pressures to being an eyewitness of warfare. The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and has become too dangerous for many Western correspondents has seen the rise of the collaborative news clip, in which legacy media use eyewitness content from citizen journalists in multimedia videos and live blogs.

Noted American War Correspondents

While most war correspondents including journalists and photographers who perform the job of a war reporter, even if they do not bear that label have to operate in dangerous battle zones, navigate relations with military officials, shift through official propaganda and viewpoints, interview observers, combatants, and civilians, and produce news stories in a timely manner, throughout the history of journalism, some of these reporters stand out. This section provides nine profiles of important American war correspondents.

Christiane Amanpour

Christiane Amanpour (1958– ) is one of the world’s top war correspondents and has covered almost every conflict in the late 20th century up to the present. She was born in London to a British mother and Iranian father, grew up in Iran and escaped with the family after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. She graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Rhode Island and worked as a reporter for WBRU, a local radio station in the early 1980s. In 1983, only 3 years after Ted Turner had created the 24-hour TV news network, she became an assistant at CNN’s international desk. Amanpour quickly made a name for herself in 1985 with her report on the political situation in Iran, as well as her detailed reporting on the Bosnian crisis and Balkan conflicts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She became well-known and respected for her coverage of the Persian Gulf War. Together with CNN reporter Peter Arnett, she provided live coverage of the war from a hotel in enemy capital Baghdad and helped establish the network as a serious source for international news. Amanpour has interviewed numerous heads of state, politicians, presidents, and leaders around the globe, including in the Middle East. She has won many Academy of Television Arts Sciences Emmy awards and other accolades for her journalism. Throughout her career, Amanpour’s reporting has emphasized the toll of war on civilian populations and the difficult ethical choices that journalists make in covering conflicts.

Peter Arnett

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and New Zealand-born Peter Arnett (1934–2025) was best known for his breaking news coverage from the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when he and a TV crew broadcast live news from a Baghdad hotel. He started his career as an Associated Press print reporter covering the Vietnam War and was an eyewitness on the ground for more than 13 years (1962–1975). In 1966, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage, which exposed the confusion and chaos of the U.S. military’s strategy. In 1981, Arnett started working for CNN and covered conflicts, war, and civil unrests in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. In 1991, Arnett and his TV crew provided live 24/7 coverage of the Persian Gulf War and the American-led invasion of the capital city from a Baghdad hotel room. Conservative leaders criticized the vivid pictures of nonmilitary casualties, including the bombing of civilian buildings, air raid shelters, and a baby milk factory. A majority of the American public, however, as a Gallup poll after the war showed, were in favor of Arnett’s reports, which chronicled the brutality of U.S. warfare. In March 1997, he was the first Western journalist to interview the arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Arnett retired from field reporting in 2007.

Richard Harding Davis

Journalist and writer Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916) was the best-known American reporter at the turn of the 20th century. His view on war changed over the course of his career, and in later stories he often highlighted the human toll and bloodshed of modern warfare. At the beginning of his career in New York, Davis was the epitome of a masculine, handsome star reporter who had started out writing fiction and short story novels, including the bestseller Soldiers of Fortune, but he had longed to cover war. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) sent Davis to report on the Cuban rebellion against Spain in 1897, which led to the Spanish-American War (1898). During this conflict, Davis’s colorful accounts and his narrative of the Rough Riders, an American volunteer unit in Cuba during the war, helped frame Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation as a man of action. Scholars have argued that Davis also sensationalized his news, self-censored stories, and rarely reported on authorities mismanagement or mistakes. Davis covered every major battle until his death in 1916, including the Greco-Turkish War (1897), the Spanish-American War (1898), the Second Boer War (1899 1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), and in 1914 the first weeks of World War I (1914–1918).

Martha Gellhorn

Maverick journalist, travel writer, and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998) started her career as a contributing writer for several publications, including the New Republic magazine. During the Great Depression, she traveled across the United States working for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and in 1936 wrote the reportage The Trouble I’ve Seen. That next year, in 1937, Gellhorn left to report on the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) for Collier’s Weekly. During this time, she met American writer and correspondent Ernest Hemingway, and the two were married for a brief time (1940–1945). In the late 1930s, Gellhorn covered the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and during World War II, and was the only female journalist to land with Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in June 1944. Gellhorn was also one of the first reporters to witness the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, and she described the horrific scenes she saw in vivid and illustrated pieces for Collier’s Weekly. Her career spanned more than six decades, and she reported on pivotal events, including the Nuremberg trials, the Arab-Israeli wars (1967), parts of the Vietnam War, and the wars in Central America in the mid-1980s. In her 1988 antiwar autobiography, Gellhorn claimed to have followed the war wherever she could find it.

Marguerite Higgins

Trailblazing American journalist and war correspondent Marguerite Higgins (1920–1966) reported on World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Her persistence, skills in frontline reporting, and the ability to get access and gather information demonstrated that war reporting was not exclusively a male career. In 1951, Higgins working for the New York Herald Tribune received a shared Pulitzer Prize for international reporting on her coverage of the Korean War. Previously she had covered World War II and rode with the Seventh Army, which liberated the Dachau concentration camp. She also covered the Nuremberg Trials after the war. In spring 1950, three weeks before the Korean War broke out, she became the Herald Tribune’s Tokyo correspondent. As one of the first journalists arriving in Korea, Higgins became an important eyewitness and reported on the clash between North Korean invaders and U.S. and South Korean troops. She survived repeated gun shelling. Some U.S. Army officials tried to ban her and other female correspondents from the front (citing the lack of toilets as a reason), but General Douglas MacArthur rescinded this order and gave Higgins and other women equal access to news and army sources. Scholars have noted that Higgins’s fearlessness and sense of competition increased when she and Herald Tribune veteran reporter Homer Bigart (1907–1991) became rivals. Higgins died at the age of 45 after having contracted the tropical disease leishmaniasis while on assignment in South Vietnam. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

George Wilkins Kendall

In the mid-19th century, George Wilkins Kendall (1809–1867), who trained as a printer and worked with Horace Greeley, cofounded the New Orleans Times Picayune in 1837 and was working as the first documented American war correspondent during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Kendall used the Picayune as a platform to advocate for westward expansion, and he joined an expedition from Austin, Texas, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, that claimed to be searching for new trade routes in the west. His paper, which sold cheaply and reached a considerable audience, was strategically positioned as New Orleans was the closest American city to the Mexican interior and accessible via horse and steamship. When war between the United States and Mexico was declared in 1846, Kendall attached himself to the Texas Rangers under Ben McCullough and to Generals Zachary Taylor, William Jenkins Worth, and Winfield Scott, moving freely among the American lines and witnessing the battles first hand. The Picayune used a pony express service, nicknamed Mr. Kendall’s Express, as well as a system of steamboats to deliver news, frontline reports, and relayed information to newspapers on the East Coast and in the North, often via railroads and telegraph lines. This pioneering communication system helped Kendall report news faster than military or political authorities. By the end of the war, Kendall had written more than 214 reports. His book The War Between the United States and Mexico Illustrated (1851) chronicled his experiences and became an authoritative account of the war.

Edward R. Murrow

American broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) was one of the 20th century’s most influential journalists. His news reporting and war correspondence for CBS News from Europe during World War II (1939–1945) and during the Korean War (1950–1953) helped establish radio and television journalism alike as a pivotal and preeminent news media. Murrow graduated from Washington State College (now University) with a major in speech, learning how to report for the ear. He served as president of the National Student Association (1929–1931) and joined CBS in 1935; in 1937 Murrow became CBS’s European director in London. Murrow’s reliable and dramatic eyewitness reporting from Europe in the late 1930s, including the German occupation of Austria and the Munich Conference in 1938, the Nazi’s annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, and the German bombings raids of London during the Battle of Britain, known as The Blitz (1940–1941), brought him national fame and widespread recognition. In 1947, after the end of World War II, Murrow and journalist Fred Friendly (1915–1998) coproduced a weekly radio news-magazine Hear It Now, which in 1951 turned into a television program, See It Now. The program aired information that exposed misinformation circulated by conservative Senator Joseph R. McCarthy who spearheaded the anticommunist hysteria of the postwar years. In 1954, Murrow broadcast the Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, which further criticized McCarthy’s tactics and, in turn, shaped public opinion. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Murrow as director of the U.S. Information Agency. During his career, Murrow won nine Emmy awards. Journalism scholars widely agree that Murrow’s eyewitness reporting, his scrutiny of official information, and the creative use of modern media to tell his stories influenced later generations of war reporters, political journalists, and international correspondents.

Ernest Taylor Ernie Pyle

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ernest Taylor Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) was one of the most influential war correspondents during World War II. He grew up on a farm near Dana, Indiana, and studied journalism at Indiana University but never graduated. After several smaller jobs, he became a reporter for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. In 1935, he became a roving reporter and traveled around the world, writing a successful column about the people he met. After the United States entered World War II, Pyle became a war correspondent and covered the military campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France in widely circulated stories. In 1944, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, which often emphasized the experiences and perspectives of the common soldier and average men. His direct and engaging style of writing resonated with readers and critics alike. Pyle called his observational skill the worm’s-eye view of war. After his work in Europe, he also covered the U.S. military and Pacific Theater on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and accompanied the 77th Infantry Division. Pyle was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on Ie Shima, an island off Okinawa, in April 1945.

George Washburn Smalley

During the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) George Washburn Smalley (1833–1916) was a correspondent for the New York Tribune and provided some of the war’s greatest scoops. As a battlefield correspondent, Smalley made a name for himself, in particular reporting the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest battle in American military history. His reporting style was marked by dense, accurate, and forceful prose. In September 1962, fewer than 36 hours after the fighting, the readers of the Tribune devoured Smalley’s six-columns long account of the Battle of Antietam. He moved with Union troops, running small errands for Union General Joseph Hooker, which allowed him unique observations and frontline experiences. After some of the most devastating battles in Maryland, Smalley took on numerous risks to get his stories to his paper in New York, having discovered that his first telegraphs were sent to the War Department and President Lincoln. In 1866, Smalley was sent to cover the war between Prussia and Austria. Having returned to New York for a few months, his editors sent him to London in May 1867 and tasked Smalley to set up a foreign bureau and organize a network of overseas reporters for the Tribune. He instituted a partnership with the London Daily News and later became the U.S. correspondent to The Times of London (1895–1906). Scholars have pointed out that Smalley had immense social capital; he had been educated at Yale University and Harvard Law School. He was a direct descendant of the Pilgrims, the son of a Congregational minister, and an antislavery advocate.

Outlook: Shaping News and Views on Conflicts

For almost 200 years, correspondents have covered battles, conflicts, and wars that have impacted societies and shaped geopolitical realities. War reporters remain important and critical eyewitnesses. Over time, their professional roles have evolved from being advocates who shared partisan perspectives during the mid- to late-19th century, to becoming more detached and independent observers in global wars in the mid-20th century, to embedded reporters in the late-20th century and beyond. The scope of their reports has continuously widened, from covering the on-the-ground warfare, military strategies, plans, and operations to providing more nuanced accounts that emphasize the civilian toll and social-political cost of armed conflicts.

Modern technologies, including the telegraph, radio, wireless, the television, and the Internet, have all revolutionized how stories, images, and information can be moved from distant frontlines to audiences at home or across the world. During the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars, television provided live coverage of combat, in color, and journalists became correspondents-commentators. In an effort to build and expand viewership and trust, journalists and media pundits shared their opinions, which was often criticized. In today’s digital world, war correspondents provide multimedia accounts of battles, terrorists attacks, and guerilla-style civilian wars. They share stories, blog, or tweet out their clips, images, and video reportage. In addition to broadcast and print news, correspondents everywhere use platforms such as YouTube, blogs, and social media to television, podcasts, and online news. More fundamentally, the pressures of the job will remain extremely high, as correspondents seek balance between the notions of objectivity and advocacy, both of which inform their professional roles and personal conscience during wartime.