Newsreels and Censorship
Newsreels were a form of short documentary films that provided American audiences with news and entertainment from the 1920s through the 1960s. These films evolved alongside the motion picture industry and were produced by both commercial studios and documentary filmmakers, reflecting two distinct philosophies. While some creators aimed for objective storytelling, many newsreels were shaped by commercial interests, leading to a selective portrayal of events that often favored sensationalism over factual accuracy. This self-imposed censorship was evident during critical historical moments, such as the Great Depression, where newsreels frequently downplayed the harsh realities faced by the American public.
Censorship in newsreels involved not only the omission of complex social issues but also the alteration of visual information to elicit emotional responses. Events like labor strikes and protests were often depicted in ways that portrayed participants negatively, while dramatic narration and sound effects heightened the sensational aspects of coverage. As television emerged, newsreels gradually lost their prominence, with their last productions ceasing in 1966. The legacy of newsreels demonstrates the impact of media on public perception and the importance of critical engagement with visual storytelling.
Subject Terms
Newsreels and Censorship
Definition: Short films, exhibited in cinemas, of news
Significance: Newsreels, widely distributed from approximately 1911 to 1966, were objects of censorship
Undergoing self-imposed and external censorship, packaged newsreel footage reached American audiences for more than fifty years and shaped their views of events. Newsreels evolved with the motion picture industry, and two different philosophies shaped the newsreels’ evolution. John Grierson and Robert Flaherty, for example, produced “objective” documentaries, the prototype of cinema verité, by editing raw footage into reels. Commercial studios, in contrast, produced “subjective” newsreels with methods similar to those of commercial film production.
A form of media censorship was common to such subjective newsreels. It involved selectively controlling the information in a newsreel to favor a particular position or deliberately altering information, including visual information, in order to create a desired impression. Pictures can lie as easily as words. Film media enhance such techniques with sound effects, narration, and music geared toward eliciting the desired emotional response. Commercial newsreels, the television of the day, often distorted events on which they reported.
The Newsreel Business
During the newsreel era, millions of Americans viewed silent and, after 1930, sound newsreels, an estimated one-half billion feet of film produced by major motion picture studios. The reels were made as part of an entertainment business—the film and theater industry. Shown locally in cinemas across the United States, newsreels served as fillers, sandwiched among serials, short subjects, and the feature films.
Accordingly, commercial studios treated motion pictures and newsreels as business products rather than as art. Used as tools for business ends, newsreels served to attract audiences to movie premieres and to publicize activities for motion picture stars. Emulating motion picture production, newsreels were produced, relative to later visual news presentations, in an overblown manner, complete with fanfare, marches, and music. Objective footage of controversial issues was less likely than footage that was aimed to please audiences with superficial and trivial images. Typical fare included beauty contests, fashions, sports, political news, stunts, disasters, and everyday events. Newsreels focused on the sensational aspects of catastrophes, disasters, and social events. Favoring shots with visual appeal, the makers of newsreels shunned interpreting complex events involving human suffering or social impact. After the footage (often staged action and usually shot without sound) was edited, narration, a musical score, and sound effects were added. Strikes, riots, hurricanes, and disasters were accompanied by dramatic narration, sound effects, and an intense musical score. Thus, the dictates of business competition among the major motion picture producers served as self-imposed censorship, as newsreels’ coverage of events unfolding in the 1930’s illustrate.
Examples of Newsreel Coverage
The 1930’s Great Depression socially and economically affected most Americans; however, the mass media provided little factual news as the policy of media seemed to be to ignore the Depression’s harsher realities. Early in the decade, five major companies dominated newsreel production. Although competition brought some realism to newsreels, evidently newsreels shielded realistic views about the Depression by avoiding complex stories involving its social impact. In general, 1930’s motion pictures aimed to amuse audiences, to serve as escapism from Depression-evoked lifestyles. Likewise, newsreels mainly covered stories rife with images of soldiers, airplanes, stunts, and babies: apparent favorites among audiences. Still, by 1931, newsreels, although not challenging the existing social order, were covering more sober events.
Footage covering the Hunger March of 1931 illustrates aspects of a self-imposed censorship. Apart from the selected footage, which offered no visual explanation of the event’s complexity, the narration describes the event and the demonstrations’ purpose in non-objective, general terms. The marchers, among the 25 percent of an American unemployed workforce, are described as “Reds” and “troublemakers”; they are not shown in a favorable or neutral light. Newsreel footage, complemented frequently by jingoistic narration, highlights police measures taken against the people who blatantly exercise their First Amendment rights.
Likewise, the 1932 footage of the 25,000-man Bonus March in Washington, D.C., renders a similar treatment. World War I veterans, earlier authorized a pension by Congress, marched on Washington in protest to the announcement that the bonus would not be paid until 1945. Images appear to startle and confuse—entertain—the audience rather than provide factual information. Newsreel narration describes the march as a “war.” A voice-over (accompanying visuals of “orderly” U.S. Army soldiers and “disorderly” marchers camped on “government property”) informs viewers the Army was assembled to deal with the “riot,” and attributes President Herbert Hoover, who insisted the Depression would “be over in sixty days,” as relating the problem to “Reds” and “criminal elements” among the marchers’ ranks. Hoover ordered soldiers to burn the camps and rout the marchers, and later issued an executive order limiting what cameramen could photograph. Cameramen complied or risked loss of their White House cards, which entitled newsreel crews to cover White House events.
The Film and Photo League, a radical group, offered an alternative view of Depression events through its production of the Workers Newsreel. The League, labeling itself a voice calling for relief from the Depression, said it wanted to shape and mobilize public consciousness of the Depression’s impact. Not having access to local cinemas, Workers Newsreel, silent films with titles, were shown in private facilities—church basements, for example. Leo Seltzer, a film producer who joined the group in the early 1930’s, used a hand-held camera to film what, he said, was actually being experienced. Though filming with a subjective focus, the Workers Newsreel offered exclusive coverage of some events, for example a mass demonstration in 1930 at Union Square in New York City. Although recorded, commercial footage of the Union Square demonstration, depicting violence and roughshod arrests, was not seen by the general public because the New York City Police Department censored it. Later, the Workers Newsreel staff acquired censored footage and exhibited it in its outlets.
Newsreel self-censorship continued into the 1950’s as the emergence of nuclear weaponry and the implications of a Cold War stirred the nation’s fear. Newsreel footage of the time neither questions nor explores the ramifications of such profound international incidents. Rather, it appears to have induced fear and elicited disturbing feelings among audiences, as jingoistic rhetoric and simplistic visuals preclude objective explanation of events.
By 1966, newsreel production had ceased. The demise of newsreels has generally been attributed to television.
Bibliography
The Reel World of News, part of the video series A Walk Through the Twentieth Century with Bill Moyers, produced and directed by David Grubin (WNET New York and KQED San Francisco, 1982); and The Great Depression, a seven-part video production of Blackside, Inc., in association with BBC-2, executive producer, Henry Hampton (WGBH Boston, 1993), provide illustrative examples of newsreel footage treatment of events recorded during the Depression. The Film Experience: Elements of Motion Picture Art, by Roy Huss and Norman Silverstein (New York: Dell Publishing, 1968), provides an overview of the evolution of the motion picture industry. Media, Messages and Men: New Perspectives in Communication, by John C. Merril and Ralph L. Lowenstein (New York: David McKay, 1971), provides an overview of basic issues in mass communication. Censorship: The Knot That Binds Power and Knowledge, by Sue Curry Jansen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), provides a general discussion of communication and society and the issue of censorship.