WILLOUGHBY HITS KOREA NEWS BIAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R002600080039-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 22, 2002
• Sequence Number: 39
• Publication Date: November 28, 1951
• Content Type: NSPR

. Approved Forease 2003/01/29: CIA-RDP80BO167
WILLOUGHBY HITS
KOREA NEWS `BIAS'
TI-r P;' f '7 YORK TIMES v-
29 November 195-1
MacArthur's Aide Says Stories
Caused Chief's Dismissal-
Reporters Deny Charges
or had improperly vrlued it. Gen-
General of the Army Douglas eral Willoughby also criticized war
MacArthur's former chief of in.. { correspondents for having referred
telligence, retired Maj. Gen. Charles to the retreat from the Manchu-
A. Willoughby, charged yesterday rian border, during which m e
that "biased, prejudiced and inac- States forces suffered heavy cas-
curate" news coverage of the Ko- j ualties, as a defeat.
rean war had contributed to the
dismissal of General MacArthur
from his Far East commands last
year.
General Willoughby made spe-
cific accusations against six war
correspondents and three news
magazines of having "created an
atmosphere of tension, uneasiness
and distrust between Tokyo and
Washington." The general said:
"This is believed to have been
the major cause of the MacArthur-
Truman split. A whispering cam-
paign bears fruit in human rela-
tions-even the most complaisant
husband will sooner or later pick
up gossip, if it is repeated often
enough and loud enough."
He named, as "among" writers
guilty of alleged distortions, Jo-
seph Alsop, syndicate columnist;
Hanson W. Baldwin, military cor-
respondent of THE NEW YORK
TIMES; Homer Bigart, of The New
Yoork Herald Tribune; Hal Boyle
of The Associated Press; Drew
Pearson, syndicate columnist, andli
Christopher Rand, former member
of The Herald Tribune- Far East
staff.
Magazines Called Defeatist
He named Time, Newsweek and
the U. S. News and World Report
as magazines that "appeared to
go out of their way to create de-
featist-thought patterns and to be-
little the country's armed forces."
Writing in Cosmopolitan Maga-
zine, General Willoughby said that
the Heart and Scripps-Howard
newspapers "have invariably been
reliable and well informed." Cos-
mopolitan magazine is a Hearst
publication. General Willoughby
said that THE NEW YORK TIMES
had published some "discerning
editorials." His quarrel with Mr.
Baldwin was over an article THE
TIMES military analyst had writ-
ten for the Saturday' Evening Post
before the Korean war began.
Much of General Willoughby's
criticism of the war correspond-
ents and columnists was directed
against their reporting of situa-
tions in the pushback of United
States forces by Chinese troops
from the Manchurian border a year
ago and their reporting that Gen-
eral MacArthur's headquarters
had either received faulty intelli-
gence about the Chinese build-up
General Willoughby's accusations
were immediately challenged by
most of 'those whom he accused,
some of the writers citing the Gen-
.eral's charges as further evidence
of his unreliability. Mr. Baldwin
said: "As an intelligence officer,
General Willoughby was widely
and justly criticized by Pentagon
officials as well as in the papers.
His present article is as mislead-
ing and inaccurate as were some
of his intelligence reports."
Article Written Before War
Mr. Baldwin said his Saturday'
Evening Post article, of which
General Willoughby had said "no
more effective piece of destructive)
psychological warfare can be
imagined," had not referred specif-
ically to the Eighth Army, now in
Korea, because it was written sev-
eral months before the war began.
The article, an evaluation of Amer-
ican soldiering, generalship and
equipment, had said they were
sometimes inferior to those of
some other nations.
Mr. Bigart, now in Paris, cabled:
"General MacArthur and his tight
little circle of advisers have never
been able to stomach criticism,
whether from a war correspondent
or the President of the United
States. In an attempt to silence
criticism, they have adopted the
line that anyone who questions
their judgment is 'inaccurate,
biased and prejudiced' and that
any criticism of them involves a
slur on the whole army."
Mr. Boyle said: "The General's
job was to obtain information
about the Chinese and to evaluate
it. I though then, and I still think,
that our intelligence was tragically
bad. Generalities about 'bias and
prejudice' can not outweight the
hard facts of defeat and the cold
statistics of losses. It was not
'bias and prejudice' that rolled the
army back across thousands of
square miles of lost ground."
Mr. Alsop said, in part: "Men
,like Homer Bigart and Hal Boyle
who were frontline correspondents
right through the war knew a damn
sight more of what was going on
than General Willoughby, so far as
I was able to observe." .
Z-,
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Approved For Release 2003/01/29 : CIA-RDP80BO1676R002600080039-6
 STATINTL Approved For Release 2003/01/29 : CIA-RDP80BO1676R002600080039-6
Approved For Release 2003/01/29 : CIA-RDP80BO1676R002600080039-6