Wartime Censorship’s Deadly Legacy
When death came knocking in 1918, newspapers across America kept their doors shut and their blinds drawn. A little over a year later, it passed the 1918 Sedition Act, which made it a crime to say anything the government perceived as harming the country or the war effort. Again, it’s difficult to know the extent to which the government may have used this to silence reports of the flu, or the extent to which newspapers self-censored for fear of retribution. While soldiers bled in European trenches, another enemy was quietly claiming more American lives than bullets ever would.
The wartime atmosphere created perfect conditions for media manipulation. Simultaneously, the government mounted a massive propaganda effort. An architect of that effort said, “Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms…. Publishers found themselves caught between two masters: their duty to inform the public and their fear of a government that could jail them for twenty years.
The Birth of a Misnomer
Spain remained neutral throughout World War I and its press freely reported its flu cases, including when the Spanish king Alfonso XIII contracted it in the spring of 1918. “Basically, it gets called the ‘Spanish flu’ because the Spanish media did their job,” says Lora Vogt, curator of education at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. This tragic irony would define how the world remembered the pandemic.
Spain was a neutral country unconcerned with appearances of combat readiness, and without a wartime propaganda machine to prop up morale, so its newspapers freely reported epidemic effects, making Spain the apparent locus of the epidemic. The censorship was so effective that Spain’s health officials were unaware its neighboring countries were similarly affected.
False Reassurances and Deadly Consequences
Chicago offers one example: Its public health commissioner said he’d do “nothing to interfere with the morale of the community…. It is our duty to keep the people from fear. Worry kills more people than the epidemic” (Robertson, 1918). This became the rallying cry of officials nationwide, but reality painted a different picture entirely.
Of course, the disease generated fear independent of anything officials did or did not do, but the false reassurances given by the authorities and the media systematically destroyed trust. That magnified the fear and turned it into panic and terror. The very attempts to prevent panic created conditions far worse than honest communication ever could have.
Philadelphia’s Parade of Death
In anticipation of Philadelphia’s “Liberty Loan March” in September, doctors tried to use the press to warn citizens that it was unsafe. Yet city newspaper editors refused to run articles or print doctors’ letters about their concerns. In addition to trying to warn the public through the press, doctors had also unsuccessfully tried to convince Philadelphia’s public health director to cancel the march.
The parade went ahead as planned, and within days, Philadelphia became a city of the dead. According to Barry’s book on the 1918 epidemic, “Within seventy-two hours after the parade, every single bed in the city’s thirty-one hospitals was filled. And people began dying. The newspapers that had silenced medical warnings now watched helplessly as their own community crumbled.
Newspapers as Government Accomplices
They were assisted – not challenged – by the press, which although not censored in a technical sense cooperated fully with the government’s propaganda machine. Routinely, as influenza approached a city or town – one could watch it march from place to place – local officials initially told the public not to worry, that public health officials would prevent the disease from striking them.
“Newspapers were entirely complicit. They were either intimidated or volunteered,” said Barry. Others didn’t push back when public officials called it “ordinary influenza.” The fourth estate had abandoned its watchdog role, becoming instead a lapdog to power.
The Sedition Act’s Chilling Effect
And the Sedition Act of 1918 helped newspapers fall in line with the president’s objectives. Now you could get 20 years in prison if you “willfully utter, print, write or publish” anything disloyal about the U.S. government. The threat was real, and publishers knew it.
So when Halbert L. Hoard, publisher of the Jefferson County Union in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, wrote an editorial criticizing the military for not doing enough to save soldiers from dying from the disease, Barry said the Army started to prosecute him. “As the pandemic proceeded, that prosecution was dropped,” Barry said. But the message had been sent loud and clear to every newsroom in America.
Downplaying Death in Boston
Influenza first roared out of control in the U.S. at a military base, Camp Devers, about 35 miles from Boston. By September 22, 20 percent of the 45,000 soldiers at the camp were on sick leave, overwhelming the military hospital. From there, Boston was next.
As for influenza, that was merely the day’s third story, carefully downplayed to modest, one-column, front-page articles in both papers. At least the Post headline was honest in its assessment: “No Gain on the Epidemic in Boston.” And a sober subhead reported, “191 Deaths Yesterday – Situation Remains Grave.” There was, however, a bit of hopeful spin: “Health authorities are encouraged that the increase is but a smal
Misinformation Goes Viral
Misinformation also spread along with the disease. In Ireland there was a belief that noxious gases were rising from the mass graves of Flanders Fields and being “blown all over the world by winds”. There were also rumors that the Germans were behind it, for example by poisoning the aspirin manufactured by Bayer, or by releasing poison gas from U-boats.
Others believed that the Germans carried flasks of the pathogen in submarines before dumping them in water supplies, milk, or at mass gatherings such as meetings or cinemas. Some claimed that the disease was spread in the air like chemical weapons. The combination of an intense fear of the pandemic, propaganda, racism, stereotypes, and the natural human inclination to point fingers was a breeding ground for myths and suspicion of the ‘other’.
Britain’s Defense of Denial
In Great Britain, which fought for the Allied Powers, “the Defense of the Realm Act was used to a certain extent to suppress…news stories that might be a threat to national morale,” says Catharine Arnold, author of Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History. “The government can slam what’s called a D-Notice on [a news story] – ‘D’ for Defense – and it means it can’t be published because it’s not in the national interest.”
Both newspapers and public officials claimed during the flu’s first wave in the spring and early summer of 1918 that it wasn’t a serious threat. The Illustrated London News wrote that the 1918 flu was “so mild as to show that the original virus is becoming attenuated by frequent transmission.” Sir Arthur Newsholme, chief medical officer of the British Local Government Board, suggested it was unpatriotic to be concerned with the flu rather than the war, Arnold says.
The Press Pattern of Deadly Deception
When influenza first appeared, officials routinely insisted at first it was only ordinary influenza, not the Spanish flu. As the epidemic exploded, officials almost daily assured the public that the worst was over. This pattern repeated itself again and again. Newspapers became complicit partners in this dance of denial, prioritizing comfort over truth.
An October 15, 1918 headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer read “Scientific Nursing Halting Epidemic.” In that week alone, 4,597 people in Philadelphia died of flu-related illnesses. On September 20, the Arkansas Gazette wrote: “Spanish influenza is plain la grippe – same old fever and chills.” The next month, Arkansas confirmed it had 1,800 cases and issued a statewide quarantine.
When Truth Became Treason
The United States was no different. In 1917 California Senator Hiram Johnson made the since-famous observation that “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” The U.S. government passed a law that made it punishable by 20 years in jail to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the government of the United States.”
“The refusal to tell the truth killed people. That’s the biggest single lesson coming out of 1918,” said historian John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza.” In an era when speaking truth to power literally meant risking two decades behind bars, most newspapers chose silence over service.
The Lasting Damage of Media Betrayal
War censorship and propaganda also had concrete and adverse effects on efforts to mitigate the pandemic. By attempting to censor information on the seriousness of the situation, many belligerent countries most certainly hampered public health efforts to stem the pandemic. At the same time, after years of war propaganda, some of the population no longer believed in governments or trusted public information.
It is worth noting that this terror, at least in paralyzing form, did not seem to materialize in the few places where authorities told the truth. One lesson is clear from this experience: In handling any crisis, it is absolutely crucial to retain credibility. Giving false reassurance is the worst thing one can do. When newspapers abdicated their responsibility to inform, they didn’t just fail their readers – they helped kill them.
Modern Echoes of Ancient Lies
Airplane travel facilitates the rapid spread of pathogens, and even faster communication technology enables the spread of fear and misinformation. In our era of political polarization, “fake news,” and tribal politics, trust in the media, government officials, and even science is fading. Under such circumstances, the public’s failure to trust the guidance offered by public health officials may well make a bad situation worse.
The ghost of 1918 haunts every pandemic response today. Mistrust of information from health authorities is still a challenge. Modern means of communication and the recent development of digital social networks make it even harder. Undocumented claims, false information, conspiracy theories, and dangerous conclusions can spread as quickly as viruses. The newspapers that once served as gatekeepers of information have been replaced by algorithms that often amplify deception faster than truth can travel.
The 1918 flu pandemic killed between fifty and one hundred million people worldwide, but the newspapers that should have warned the world instead chose to whisper sweet lies while death knocked down doors. Their silence didn’t save morale – it cost lives. In our rush to avoid panic, we created something far worse: a world where truth became the enemy and lies wore the uniform of patriotism. What would you have done if faced with the choice between twenty years in prison and telling the truth that could save lives?