I learned this today. The first war correspondent is technically William Howard Russell.
William Howard Russell was a war correspondent during the Crimean War. The Crimean War was a war between Russia on one side and the Ottoman Empire, France, and the United Kingdom on the other side. It lasted from October 1853 to February 1856 and William Howard Russell was there for 22 months.
He is considered the first “modern” war correspondent, but he was not the first war correspondent. People have written about wars since there have been wars. Homer’s Odyssey is about the Trojan War. Julius Caesar wrote books about his own campaigns. However, all of these people wrote about the battles long after they had ended, sometimes years later.
The first person who actually sent reports from an active warzone, was John Bell. He owned the London Oracle and in 1794, he followed the Duke of York to Flanders to report on his war with Revolutionary France. He posted his reports back to England and they were printed days later. They were popular, but in the end, he had to sell the newspaper to pay for the debts he incurred while in Flanders.
In the 1830s, Charles Lewis Gruneison, who worked for the London Morning Post, was sent to Spain to report on the Carlist revolt. He posted back his reports and was actually arrested as a spy, barely avoiding execution.
During the American Civil War, several reporters went in to battle with the troops and sent back reports. Many of them were there as soldiers as well.
Despite all these people, William Howard Russell is known as the first war correspondent.
William Howard Russell was born in 1820. He became a reporter with the Times and his first experience of war reporting was from a military conflict between Prussia and Denmark in 1850. He was then sent to Malta. Shortly after that he was posted to the Crimea. His editor told him that it wouldn’t be a very long posting, but he was out there for the better part of two years.
Russell started to send back dispatches from Crimea that were sometimes extremely long. He was outraged at the lack of planning in the British army and at the blasé attitude of the commanding officers. They seemed to be more concerned with their dress code than they were with the care of their men.
Russell was extremely strict about only writing what was true. By doing so, he alienated the officers of the British army, but he was extremely popular with the readers back home. His reports would be posted to a local telegraph office, telegraphed to England, and then printed in the Times when they arrived. It wasn’t the live reporting we have today, but for the people at the time it was an incredible experience. They were getting news stories mere days after the action had taken place. For the first time they could read about what was happening in the war and the reports were unvarnished and uncensored. They could read about the horrors. He was so effective that the British public who had been totally in favor of the Crimean War to begin with began to turn against their government.
So, why is William Howard Russell known as the first war correspondent? What made him stand out? In my opinion, four things really helped to seal his name in the history books. Firstly, his writing was extremely appealing. He had a fast narrative style, and he didn’t sugarcoat anything. He gave his readers an honest appraisal of what was happening, and he was brutally honest. He held nothing back and criticized the military and political establishment. In fact, Florence Nightingale said that it was reading his news reports that made her want to sign up to help.
Secondly, he was the first correspondent to make use of the newly invented telegraph and it allowed him to get his reports to the Times almost the day after they had happened. Reporting that fast had never been heard of before.
Thirdly, the telegraph meant that his stories could be broadcast to other countries as well. He may have been the first international war correspondent. His stories were republished in other papers as well.
And fourthly, his reporting coincided with a huge boom in the number of newspaper readers. The Industrial Revolution had brought great changes to English society and one of them was an increase in the rate of literacy. As more people could read, more newspapers were sold. Russell was a great reporter, but his timing couldn’t have been better. He was able to produce fast reports that a growing number of people not only wanted to read, but were able to read.
So, William Howard Russell might not technically have been the first war correspondent, but I think his title of the first “modern” war correspondent is justified.
Photo By Roger Fenton – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=308374
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_correspondent
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26442017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Russell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_newspaper_publishinghttps://www.military-history.org/feature/19th-century/war-reporters-william-howard-russell.htm