‘A Heavy Blue Pencil’: The Effect of Government Censorship on Reuters Coverage of the Arab–Israeli Conflict,1967–73

International media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict has been the subject of animated public and academic debate. One much-discussed aspect is the effect of propaganda or censorship on reporting the conflict to global, and especially western, audiences. This article explores the effect of government censorship in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel on coverage of the conflict by the Reuters news agency, one of the most important international providers of media information. It researches in turn the operation of censorship and other press restrictions in each of the five belligerents, demonstrating similarities and differences in the challenges they created for Reuters and foreign reporting in general. This reveals the various levels of compliance which censorship necessitated for Reuters, but also the ultimate frustration of efforts of all the governments to totally control the flow of information to foreign audiences.

Historians have long noted the attempts of democratic and non-democratic governments to manipulate or suppress press coverage of their actions, in peace and especially war, during the age of mass-media. Numerous studies have examined government censoring of the press in totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Communist China, democracies such as the United States of America and Britain, and colonial regimes such as Britain's empire. ¹ Academic writing on the history and contemporary practice of censorship in the post-independence Middle East has tended to be based on published sources and concentrate on its use as a government tool to control the local press and stifle domestic opposition. ² This study, in contrast, deals with restrictions on foreign reporting and especially on the dissemination of news relating to the Arab–Israeli conflict to audiences outside the region. It does this by considering the administrative and editorial correspondence between the London head office of Reuters and its staff in the Middle East region, recording the organizational, editorial and commercial difficulties faced by the news agency. Not least were formal prepublication censorship arrangements, usually underpinned by government legislation or regulations, or the application of other restrictions on reporting, including withholding communication facilities, bans on entry or travel, and threats of expulsion, incarceration or even violence.

This primary material permits a first glimpse and assessment of the censoring systems and practices that governments in the region have generally kept inaccessible to academic research. It enables gauging specific cases mentioned in the files, in which censorship affected the news report. Revealed too are the different ways in which Reuters correspondents and editors sought to evade censorship of their reports, but the predicament of news agencies like Reuters whose commercial considerations also included selling news in the region, not only reporting. The period on which this article focuses, between the 1967 and 1973 wars, was one in which the Arab–Israeli conflict acquired the character and intensive press attention it holds until today. This involved prolonged warfare along the cease-fire borders of Israel and the territories it had occupied in 1967, as well as Palestinian attacks on civilian air travel outside the region that greatly intensified global media interest. However, the same censoring systems continued even after 1973, and restrictions on foreign press access due to prospects of violence are particularly evident to this day.

Reuters was the most prominent international news agency working in the Middle East, though facing ever-increasing competition from American rivals Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI), and the (government-funded) French News Agency (AFP). The leading position of Reuters had been entrenched during the long decades of British imperial predominance in the region. ³ Its oldest regional office had operated since the nineteenth century in Cairo, seat of the most important government in the Arab world. It was also the only one with a British manager and chief correspondent, Noel Hudson, when war broke out in June 1967.

The Reuters staff in Cairo felt keenly the humiliating Arab defeat in the 1967 war. Like all the foreign press corps in Cairo when the crisis broke out in mid May, Reuters reporters were not allowed to leave the Egyptian capital when the fighting started. Two British correspondents making unauthorized trips to Ismailia were expelled. Military censorship was imposed, causing great delay to cable transmission and forcing news agencies to pay for ‘urgent' rates and occasional expensive telephone calls. When defeat soon became apparent, the atmosphere in Cairo became hostile and foreign correspondents were advised by Egyptian authorities to avoid the poorer areas of Cairo and not to carry cameras. Crowds violently vented anger in particular at the British and US consulates over the generally held belief, encouraged by government propaganda, that their countries had provided ‘air cover' for Israeli attacks. All US correspondents were expelled from Egypt. Cairo communications ceased after President Nasser announced his resignation and two taxi loads of British correspondents, engulfed by an angry crowd, fled to the Reuters office for protection. Noel Hudson and his distraught but loyal Egyptian staff drove them all to a hotel in a well guarded area. They had a tense night until the public jubilation on the following day, when Nasser announced he was staying on. ⁴

Press restrictions continued in the aftermath of war. Hudson, who soon left Cairo, believed that strict censorship of the foreign press harmed the Arab ‘hope of presenting their case reasonably and intelligently to the world’. The Egyptians could have actually gained much sympathy by allowing correspondents to report from the Canal Zone on the plight of returning Egyptian troops, thirsting from the scorching Sinai sun. However, when they asked permission to go there, they were accused ‘of only wanting to shame and humiliate Egypt’. ⁵ Another visiting correspondent for Reuters, Ralph Izzard, explained in October 1967 that ‘vigilant' military restrictions during a press tour to the blocked Suez Canal delayed transmission and ‘ruined what might have been a very good story'. His reporting generally suffered from ‘blind' censorship, having ‘no means of telling how long a story has been held up, or even torn up’. ⁶ No wonder that John Fawcus, an editor on the Reuters world news desk, noted that ‘many foreigners' regarded Egypt ‘as nothing better than a police state’. ⁷

Reporting the fighting across the Suez Canal during the ‘war of attrition' declared by Nasser in 1969, the Reuters office had to remind London of ‘our daily battle with the censors and the state information apparatus' and ‘that what reaches London from Cairo is not necessarily “the whole truth”'. ⁸ The manner in which Egyptian censorship could interfere with reporting was well illustrated following an Israeli air attack in April 1970. The Egyptian authorities reported that a village school was hit, killing some 30 children and their teacher and wounding dozens more. Foreign correspondents were taken to see shrapnel-torn bodies and the wounded in a nearby hospital, but not the damaged school itself, which the Israelis claimed had been irresponsibly set up in a fortified ‘military structure'. ⁹ John Chadwick, the Reuters manager and chief correspondent in Cairo, did not make it clear, as other correspondents did, that he was at the hospital but did not see the school. His use of the plural ‘reporters saw' to describe the scenes at the hospital, led some Reuters subscribers to query whether he himself was in the area at all. Chadwick explained that Egyptian censorship at first removed references to the fact that the school had not been visited. However, a few hours later the censors allowed him to convey this information ‘for some reason which is still not altogether clear.' Reuters (and UPI) ‘suffered because we filed early' but only discovered this on the following day. ¹⁰

This kind of censoring harmed not only the reputation of Reuters for truthful reporting, but also that of the Egyptian authorities. Indeed, there were growing Egyptian concerns for some time, that rigid or capricious censorship was harming the media battle with Israel for foreign hearts and minds: Israeli military announcements arrived sooner on foreign news desks and seemed more credible. ¹¹ An attempt to improve matters was made by Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the influential editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram and Nasser confidant, after his appointment as Minister of Information in April 1970. After the ‘war of attrition' ended with a cease fire in early August, Heikal publicly promised to expand foreign press information services and end the practice of ‘blind' censorship: only articles containing military information would be subject to censorship and that would be done in the correspondent's presence by a military officer. ¹² Heikal's short career in government ended after Nasser's sudden death and in any case, despite all Egyptian intentions, censorship was still imposed in an unpredictable manner.

Consider the direct Soviet military involvement in Egypt, which began during the ‘war of attrition' with the placing of Soviet-manned SA-3 anti-aircraft missiles in March 1970. ¹³ Unofficial news of the arrival in Egypt of Soviet pilots as well was reported by the foreign press from Cairo in early April, ¹⁴ but probably in view of the uproar in Israel – and especially Washington – when it was later confirmed by intelligence reports, censors once again ordered that all references to them be deleted. ¹⁵ In early January 1971, Reuters rapidly transmitted to London the contents of a public speech by Sadat, the new President, in which he disclosed for the first time the earlier death of six Soviet soldiers in an Israeli air attack on a missile site near Cairo. Under immediate Soviet pressure, all references to their troops were censored from news transmissions and weeded out of the account by the government news agency, in which they had already appeared. The Ministry of Information even pressured Chadwick to alter the Reuters version, hours after it had been sent to London giving the news agency a world exclusive. Chadwick refused. The clumsy attempt at belated censorship baffled even the Reuters head-office that for a while queried the report. However, it was confirmed by the Daily Telegraph correspondent, who flew out to Nicosia to evade censorship and deliver the story. ¹⁶

Reuters however, could simply not afford the risks that were sometimes taken by individual media correspondents. Its peculiar position was that of a leading news agency, gathering daily news for regional and global markets on a vaster scale than most media organizations, and even more importantly, one whose business profits included selling news as well as gathering it. When a senior staffer on the leading newspaper Al-Ahram was arrested by the authorities in unclear circumstances, the London head-office supported Chadwick's decision not to file the story, like other correspondents had, ‘via pigeon to Beirut'. This meant by air-travel to the other important Arab news centre, for transmission from there. The authorities often turned a blind eye to such circumvention of censorship, as long as the report was issued elsewhere and could be denied in Cairo. ¹⁷ But there was ‘a tight screen of secrecy' around this particular case and sending a mostly ‘speculative' report about the reasons for the arrest was ‘certainly not worth' the risk of irritating an important subscriber like Al-Ahram, whose editor-in-chief Heiykal had only just recently been appointed also as Minister of Information. ¹⁸ In Egypt as elsewhere in the region, Reuters staff had to walk a tight-rope: on one hand competing with other media organizations for exciting stories to be transmitted in and outside the region, on the other endeavouring not to seriously antagonize local governments or subscribers.

Government interference also impinged on foreign reporting in the comparatively free political climate of 1960s Lebanon. ¹⁹ Even during the peaceful period before the 1967 war, reports going abroad relating not only to security matters but also to Lebanese foreign relations or economic interest, had to be cleared with the authorities – especially during political or economic crises – though officially no restrictions existed. ²⁰ Local military censorship was also declared during the Middle East crisis on the eve of the 1967 war and remained in force on political matters in its immediate aftermath, though Lebanon did not participate in it. ²¹ Even after it was officially suspended in November 1967, the army's military intelligence continued to seize newspaper issues carrying articles of a ‘provocative character'. The British embassy in Beirut had already noted that the press freedom on which ‘the Lebanese pride themselves has always been much qualified', though its inconsistent application made it a ‘futile exercise' in truly suppressing news. ²²

The particular concern of Reuters was the power of the Lebanese authorities to disrupt most of its news reporting and distribution operation in the Middle East, by suspending its Beirut-based regional office or communications infrastructure. In 1969, Reuters launched a new regional service in Arabic and reorganized and considerably expanded its reporting facilities in the region. Ian Macdowall, a rising star at Reuters, was appointed chief correspondent and manager of the Beirut regional bureau, with the highly-respected Elias Na'was as his deputy. ²³ Macdowall seems to have arrived with a brief and journalistic inclination to take greater risks in defying the authoritarian government pressure that had previously resulted in a ‘milk and water type of Middle East report’. ²⁴ Much of this related to internal Arab affairs, some to the conflict with Israel.

However, gathering and selling news in the Arab media market, much of it state-controlled, necessitated a delicate cultivation of government contacts. Macdowall was careful not to antagonize the authorities in a way that would endanger the operation of the Reuters regional news office in Beirut. ²⁵ One outcome was a plea for withholding certain Reuters news reports from the region, a practice which had been carried out also in other conflicts. ²⁶ In Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world, Macdowall was ‘as conscious as London' of the need ‘to avoid having contracts cancelled' or endanger ‘the ability of our correspondents to operate with safety'. However, he observed that what concerned the Lebanese authorities – and other Arab rulers – was not ‘so much our reporting the truth about their countries to the rest of the world' as the arrival back to the area of these stories on the Reuters regional ‘Eastern service'. There they could be picked up by the Arab press and fuel domestic passions and regional rivalries. ²⁷ To avoid the self-censoring of news likely to anger certain Middle Eastern governments for all Reuters clients world-wide, editorial policy was to withhold such ‘sensitive copy' only from reaching Reuters subscribers in the Middle East. Indeed, when the London desk accidentally beamed on the Eastern service a Reuters report from Beirut which described Arab claims of air victories over Israel as ‘grossly exaggerated' and noted the Lebanese avoidance of air combat with Israel, the government threatened Reuters staff in Beirut with action before a military court dealing with press matters for carrying ‘anti-Arab propaganda'. ²⁸

The shattering of Lebanon's fragile political tranquility in 1969 resulted in much stricter censorship on both the foreign and domestic press. The immediate cause was Palestinian rocket and cross border attacks on Israel from Lebanese territory, resulting in intensifying Israeli air and ground retaliation. ²⁹ Macdowall explained to the London head-office in September 1969 the difficulties of reporting from Beirut ‘fully and frankly' what was happening, as direct references to Palestinian attacks on Israel from Lebanon were banned, ‘although these can be hinted at'. Following a recent Israeli border raid in South Lebanon, Reuters were only allowed to report 10 hours later the first official Lebanese statement, ‘which made no mention of commando activities’. Some information on what was happening along the border with Israel, was ‘available' from the Palestinian organizations, but this was ‘a biased source which we cannot use with any confidence’. Macdowall pointed out that it was ‘virtually impossible' for the Beirut office to get first-hand information from the south ‘as travel there is strictly controlled and foreign correspondents are rigidly banned’. ³⁰

The impact of these border clashes on Lebanon's deep political divisions was the main reason for the authorities' nervousness on their reporting in the press. These divisions ran on mostly sectarian lines between the poorer and ‘leftist' Muslims who supported the Palestinians and the generally affluent Christians who opposed them, the latter prominent in the security forces. The censors – controlled by the security forces – used ‘a heavy blue pencil' on any reference by foreign correspondents to the possibility of internal violence or even sectarian disagreements. ³¹ After the eruption of open warfare in the south of Lebanon between the Lebanese army and Palestinian militias on 15 October, censorship became extremely tough, holding up reports of the clashes from Beirut for several days. Macdowall found that it was possible to get much through the censors, by the use of ‘high-flown polysyllabic English larded with complimentary remarks' about the army's handling of the situation, which he then deleted before filing the copy. ³² However, conforming to ‘the letter of censorship' often meant being ‘unable to state plain facts plainly' and in the case of expurgated or censored reports, it was up to the London editorial desk ‘to dot iiis and cross ttts' by restoring meaning to the piece or adding background. ³³

During such times of crisis, or when there were particular newsworthy events, foreign correspondents often risked circumventing censorship. Macdowall sent out ‘as much verboten copy as possible' in the form of telegraphed internal service messages with hints for the London desk that these are actually ‘intended for publication', perhaps ascribed to another news centre. ³⁴ Detailed reports which had not gone through the censors were sent abroad by air travel too, sometimes just as a precaution in case other news agencies did so. ³⁵ The ‘dog eat dog' news agency competition led each to ‘gladly' inform the censors that ‘the opposition' was getting out copy illegally. ³⁶ Macdowall advised the London desk that the authorities were ‘very suspicious' if censored reports were issued from Nicosia and it was preferable to supposedly ascribe them to Reuters' offices in ‘more remote' European capitals. ³⁷

As in Cairo, the official government attitude was that ‘anything not too outrageous' could be tolerated as long as it was not filed out openly from Beirut. ³⁸ However, a source of repeated frustration was that even the local press was actually allowed to say, on internal rivalries between the authorities and the Palestinian militias, much that Reuters was not allowed itself to report abroad. Nor could it even quote any censored matter that had already been printed in the Beirut newspapers. ³⁹ The solution was to instruct the Reuters office in Jordan to file directly to the London desk press reports on internal Lebanese affairs from Beirut newspapers, once they reached Amman, if Reuters in Beirut had not been permitted to send them. ⁴⁰

Another threat to reporting was the volatile and violent Lebanese domestic scene: the breaking-down of government authority evident in the growth and unruly behaviour of armed Lebanese and Palestinian militias. After the bombing of a Swissair plane on its way to Tel Aviv shortly after take-off in February 1970, killing all 47 people aboard, Reuters was bitterly attacked in the Lebanese and pro-Palestinian Jordanian press for reporting an assumption of responsibility by a spokesman of one Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which later that day denied its involvement. ⁴¹ The press had taken its cue from the Lebanese government which, under political and commercial pressure from Arab airlines, stated on radio that an official investigation found that no Palestinian spokesman had talked to the press and that Reuters officials had recognized their first report was incorrect. This was untrue and broadcast without the consent of Macdowall or his staff. In fact, other news agencies had actually cited the same spokesman and Macdowall found some comfort in the fact that Reuters had drawn all the fire for being the first to report, as well as being the most prominent western news agency in the Arab world. However, this raised the concern that ‘some fanatic' might attack the bureau: Beirut had seen half a dozen not ‘particularly efficient' bomb attacks on newspaper offices in the past year. ⁴² Ranald Maclurkin, chief news editor at the London head-office, urgently told Macdowall with underlined letters that ‘the safety of yourself and the rest of our Beirut staff is paramount. It comes before anything else and that includes the news'. ⁴³

The most threatening regime for foreign reporting was that ruling Syria. In Damascus, Reuters employed a local correspondent, Edmond Khleif, whose work was augmented by another reporter, Malik Al-Husseini. On the eve of the 1967 war, the two were operating under strict censorship rules, in a totalitarian atmosphere. Their office and home telephones were known to be tapped all the time and both were ‘scared stiff' that an ‘indiscreet' request for information by service message from London or telephone by the regional Reuters office in Beirut could result in them being thrown into jail ‘indefinitely' on charges of ‘espionage'. The London and Beirut desks were instructed to use great caution in approaching them. ⁴⁴

The effect of this press climate was well apparent immediately after the war, in Reuters coverage of a press conference in Syria by members of ‘a fact-finding mission' from the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, sent in September 1967 to investigate the recent fighting. Reuters reported that the mission members said they would draw-up a report on ‘Israel's attack on Arab countries' on their return to London. However, the British leader of the mission complained to Reuters that they had not uttered those words. ⁴⁵ An internal Reuters enquiry found that al-Husseini attended the conference, but his English was ‘poor and he relied on the interpretation by a Syrian Foreign Ministry official’. Worse still, Khlief explained that even had they reported verbatim the statements in English, Syrian censorship would only pass a story agreeing with the version put out by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). This always referred to the June war as Israeli ‘aggression', a word accordingly attributed to the mission leader. ⁴⁶ The Reuters editorial management expressed grave concern about this ‘incredible' explanation, wondering ‘how many other reports have been flavoured to suit the official taste and we have accepted them, in all good faith, as being a true and balanced account of what has happened’. ⁴⁷ The only solution it found to ensure ‘we get an objective report out of Damascus', was to pin every controversial statement, opinion or quote on SANA, or another local source. ⁴⁸ This perhaps covered Reuters, but was hardly a firm commitment to reporting what was truly said or happened.

Not much had changed by July 1969 when Ian Macdowall, as head of the Reuters regional news centre in Beirut, paid his first short visit to Damascus. Macdowall observed that in response to the concerted protests of the local correspondents working for news agencies, the government had conceded that they might file without censorship anything issued by SANA or broadcast over the radio, which was firmly controlled by the state. However, all other stories had to be taken to the Information Ministry, where anything but the blandest report of military affairs or internal politics was censored. Press control began in practice with the SANA monopoly over news gathering. Correspondents were not allowed to make independent checks, ‘even on the most innocuous stories', and all questions had to be first directed to SANA or the ‘uncommunicative' Foreign Ministry. Under pressure of competition with other news agencies, Khlief and al-Husseini took some risks by deviating from the regulations, but all their reports were monitored by SANA who circulated ‘offending stories from foreign agencies' among Government ministries. ⁴⁹

In fact, Macdowall believed himself to be one of only a few British correspondents to be allowed in Syria since the war, the Government having imposed strict visa regulations for visiting journalists in September 1967. ⁵⁰ His visa, granted in a record time of five days, was actually issued for a business trip to explain the expansion of Reuters regional service: preserving its few subscribers in Syria and hopefully extracting new sources of revenue. Having good relations with government was of course imperative for the trading side of Reuters’ news distribution in Syria: its few unreliable and intransigent media subscribers were all connected with the government or ruling Baath party. ⁵¹ Macdowall hoped he made some useful contacts in this respect with senior Syrian officials in charge of press and publicity, to whom he argued that the Arab case in the conflict with Israel was ‘going by default' because the Arabs themselves were ‘seriously restricting the flow of objective news reports from their countries’. He stressed that Reuters did not ‘make propaganda for either side' but rather reported ‘what we see and hear as factually and objectively as possible', something the Israelis permitted ‘to a much greater extent than the Arab States’. ⁵² This argument was made by Reuters in Egypt too: relaxing censorship would in effect improve the global presentation of the Arab perspective.

One month later, such an event occurred after a TWA flight was hijacked to Damascus by members of a Palestinian group, turning ‘girl commando' Leila Khaled into an international celebrity. ⁵³ On hearing the news, Macdowall immediately set out from Beirut to Damascus, crossing the Lebanese–Syrian border on the strength of a not yet expired visa for another recent business trip. He was first bounced out of the Damascus hotel already housing the crew and passengers, but succeeded at the Reuters office in getting through on the telephone to the just-released flight captain. Allowed back in the hotel, interviews with a number of air-hostesses concluded an exclusive 2000-word report on what had happened aboard the plane, capturing US newspaper front pages. Macdowall described his exploits in an in-house Reuters newsletter, as combining a lucky break with determined ignorance of the rules. ⁵⁴ However, the relations he had already built with Syrian officials helped and had his report been offensive to the Syrians, which it was not, it could have affected his future dealings with the regime.

Certainly the resident reporters continued to feel the totalitarian government pressure. Renewed accreditation for Edmond Khleif (and the resident AP reporter) was withheld in April 1970 without explanation. Khlief could not report for three weeks until the ‘security people' gave their assent, probably helped by Macdowall's personal intervention during a periodic trip to Damascus. When al-Husseini first phoned the Beirut office with the problem, Macdowall thought he did not sound over-concerned but, as he informed London, this may have been because al-Husseini knew their telephone conversation was being tapped. ⁵⁵ Under such conditions, it was highly unlikely that the two correspondents resident in Damascus could openly produce any journalism displeasing to the regime.

The physical danger to reporters was most apparent during the Jordan crisis later that year. Tension between King Hussein and the Palestinian population which formed a majority in his kingdom was already evident before the 1967 war. ⁵⁶ In a country whose ruler had long-standing British connections, Reuters had certain communication facilities and reporting privileges. In his first visit to Jordan in June 1969, Macdowall found that Reuters were exempt from submitting all their stories and could read doubtful ones over the phone to the censor; other news agencies and foreign correspondents telephoned their copy out only after getting it stamped by the censor. ⁵⁷ Nevertheless, in times of crisis as during clashes in February 1970 between the government and Palestinian militias over their right to carry arms, Macdowall preferred to have Reuters reports from Amman bylined as if written by roving Pakistani regional correspondent Ibrahim Noori, sent from Beirut to help cover the crisis. Many had actually been composed by Muhammad Attallah, head of the Amman bureau. Attallah had bravely stood up to the ‘commando bully-boys and security forces alike' but he was more liable to imprisonment as a Jordanian national and Macdowall wanted to spare him another ‘taste of a Jordanian jail', where he had already spent four days for his reporting for Reuters. ⁵⁸

In June 1970, the situation in Jordan plunged into deeper crisis when heavy fighting erupted in Amman between government forces and Palestinian militias. Already in town to reinforce the bureau after early signs of trouble appeared and anticipating censorship, Noori gave Reuters an early news break by sending a report with a passenger flying to Beirut. Indeed, no more reports could be sent because the government imposed a total ban on reporting abroad. However, rivals AP and UPI managed to send messages by telephone to Beirut for many more hours through a lax operator in the Intercontinental Hotel, where most foreign correspondents were based. AFP reported from the start through French embassy communications. It took a whole day until the British embassy in Jordan, with the authority of the Foreign Office, simultaneously approached by Reuters management in London, provided a route to channel out up to 1000 words a day. ⁵⁹ Reuters could have filed uncensored stories to Beirut on its own Morse communication circuit, but the Jordanian army monitored transmissions and being caught defying censorship would have risked the loss of an exclusive facility that gave Reuters an everyday lead on rivals such as AP. In the post-crisis inquiries on the failure to communicate for a crucial first day on an event capturing global headlines, a secret code system was arranged for Amman to alert Beirut to switch to an alternative frequency and receive a short burst of copy in Morse, if there were to be a recurrence of fighting. Only if ‘a really major news break' happened, such as King Hussein's abdication or assassination, were no holds to be barred and censorship be openly defied to get the story out first, ‘regardless of possible repercussions’. ⁶⁰

As in Syria, and to a lesser extent in Egypt and Lebanon, the possible repercussions related not only to reporting, but also to the news agency's prospects of profiting by selling news in a country in which the government controlled most if not all news organizations. As the main news agency trading in Jordan, Reuters had more to lose than its rival western news agencies, with the French government-subsidized AFP in particular, constantly in the wings with attractive business offers and promises of better service on Arab affairs. The Jordanian government clampdown on two pro-Palestinian newspapers who subscribed to Reuters, already meant some loss of revenue. Negotiations with the government broadcasting service and official Jordan News Agency (JNA) proved ‘discouraging' too. Moreover, in the wake of yet another assertion of Palestinian militia power in the recent June crisis, the chances of the Hashemite monarchy surviving seemed to Macdowall to ‘grow more slender'. If it fell and a ‘leftist' or Palestinian organization took power, he reckoned that Reuters could be deprived not only of their special Morse circuit, but also all their local media subscribers through their forced amalgamation into a government monopoly such as SANA in Syria. Partly with this in mind, partly to aid news gathering and partly to ensure the safety of their staff, Macdowall and Attallah had been working steadily in the past year ‘to try and establish good relations with the commando groups'. One step was to offer after the June clashes the regional service in Arabic to the new daily news-sheet in Amman of the Fatah movement at an especially low price. Macdowall saw this as ‘a worthwhile investment for the sake of future Reuter relations with the main fedayeen group’. ⁶¹

As it turned out, King Hussein emerged victorious in the long-expected showdown in September 1970 with the Palestinian organizations who controlled large slices of his kingdom. The Reuters reporters covering the 10 day-long Jordan crisis in extremely dangerous and physically exhausting conditions won high praise from their management, as did Macdowall who orchestrated the whole operation from Beirut; Reuters had dominated international media coverage and won tributes from subscribers around the world. ⁶² However, it was bitterly criticized by Reuters staff and media subscribers in Israel, who accused Macdowall of partiality in the conflict toward the Palestinians. The main criticism, attracting also the ire of the head of the Jordanian army information service, was the uncritical acceptance by Reuters of Damascus correspondent Malik al-Husseini's eye-witness reports from north Jordan that a Syrian army invasion force beaten back by Jordanian forces actually belonged to a ‘Palestine Liberation Army', a Syrian deception much sooner recognized as such by other news organizations. ⁶³

Macdowall himself admitted that Reuters’ report on the fighting was ‘basically favourable to the fedayeen and unfavourable to the Government' but that was ‘simply because we reported what happened in Amman and North Jordan'. However, he expected the Jordanian government to take a ‘tougher attitude towards the foreign press' once it understood ‘just how bad a press it got abroad because of its handling of the crisis’. ⁶⁴ A month later the Minister of Information did make a veiled threat concerning Reuters' Morse transmitter. This followed a report on clashes in the north of Jordan based on a PLO source but without an official Jordanian version, which was impossible to get without holding up the report. ⁶⁵ The new ‘disappointing' insistence on having stories submitted for government comment before filing was ‘bound to mean some delay', observed Maclurkin in London, but was better than having ‘our communications cut off’. ⁶⁶

On the other hand, during a visit to Syria that month, Macdowall found Reuters’ reputation stood ‘high at present' with the Syrian regime, ‘not least because of our refusal to jump on the “Syrian invasion” bandwagon' during the recent Jordan fighting, meaning of course Reuters' uncritical dissemination of Syrian deception. Syrian officials were friendly and helpful in extending Reuters news distribution deals and although censorship was ‘likely to remain restrictive' there seemed to be ‘grounds for hope that it will be applied rather more sensibly than in the past’. ⁶⁷ Once again, the relationship between the content of Reuters reports and its business prospects in the region was apparent.

In Israel too, Reuters had to contend with a pre-publication military censorship imposed since the state's establishment on both the local press and foreign reporting abroad, legally based on defence regulations enacted during the British mandate in Palestine. ⁶⁸ The Israeli occupation in 1967 of extensive Arab territories, including control over the lives of more than a million Arabs, focused unprecedented media attention on Israel, reflected in the striking expansion of the regular ‘foreign' press corps. Reuters opened in early 1969 a new and expanded Tel Aviv office, managed by its long-serving local correspondent, Arye Wallenstein, though soon with a British ‘expatriate' chief correspondent because of persistent complaints that Wallenstein was ‘self-censoring' news about anti-Arab demonstrations in Israel and Palestinian armed activity in the occupied territories. ⁶⁹ One of the reasons why the Reuters editorial management did not want to remove Wallenstein from his managerial duties altogether was his high standing with the Israeli government and media establishment, which served both Reuters news gathering and business interests. The relations he had built over the years with the military censors too were ‘extremely correct' – in the sense that Reuters did not try to bypass the system as others sometimes did – and there was an unwritten ‘gentleman's agreement' through which Reuters and later also its news agency rivals were exempted from submitting in advance all copy that was non-military or based on official sources. ⁷⁰

Colin Bickler, a British correspondent in the Tel Aviv office, observed in a lengthy report in March 1973 that Reuters may have been ‘a bit more cautious' than its rivals, but Wallenstein's policy had worked ‘successfully for some time' and he generally agreed with it. Occasionally, he pointed out, the military censors actually helped maintain accurate reporting by telling him that his sources were wrong, though he was still free to report if he so wished. This led to further checks ‘which generally, though not always, prove the censor’s point’. There were ‘of course, several forbidden areas', but these were ‘similar to the British D notice areas’. He concluded that ‘censorship can be annoying, sometimes frustrating and occasionally a little capricious – but nine times out of ten, of little significance’. ⁷¹

Nevertheless, the existence of prepublication censorship demanded caution and often caused frustrating delay. This could occasion the loss of scoops on military operations that could not be disclosed until officially announced, making it equal knowledge to all media organizations. Any serious breach of censorship, even if by honest mistake under the pressure of time, could result in the imposition of sanctions by the military censors, such as cumbersome and time-consuming submission of all copy for inspection before beaming to London. In December 1969, a Reuters report from Tel Aviv referred by mistake without clearance to an impending prisoner exchange deal with Egypt. The military censor immediately instructed that all Reuters copy be examined until further notice. Wallenstein was told that if the exchange was aborted, Reuters correspondents might be deprived of accreditation, as had recently happened to an American broadcaster, or have leased telex and communication facilities cancelled. Reuters was even asked to ‘kill' the story, which the head-office did on Wallenstein's request on the regional Eastern service, but not on the North American circuit. After the exchange was carried through, and sincere apologies for the ‘mishap' by Wallenstein, the informal privileges were restored a week later with a warning that much harsher sanctions would apply if such a ‘mishap' happened again. ⁷²

As in the Arab states, Reuters needed to stay on good terms with the authorities for day to day extensive news reporting and news distribution. Foreign newspaper correspondents, especially non-Israeli or non-resident, could take chances that Reuters could not without potentially harming business. In May 1972, a Sabena airliner on its way to Israel was hijacked by members of the Palestinian ‘Black September' group who, after a tense 40 hours with the plane grounded at Israel's international airport, were shot dead by Israeli commandos. Reuters had the news-lead for most of this period, but the London head-office was concerned that other foreign correspondents had provided details in their post-event reports that Reuters did not. The Reuters correspondent Michael Arkus explained that the censors cut out ‘a lot of colourful material, especially in relation to the taking of the plane' but some British newspaper correspondents who ‘only flew in for a day or two' did not bother to go through censorship, hoping ‘that all will be forgotten when and if they return. We however are here all the time’. ⁷³

A never-ending negotiation took place with the censors over what could be said about ‘sensitive' security matters. ⁷⁴ For instance, while all incidents could be reported, there were restrictions on identification of military informants. This led for some time to use of the euphemism ‘local residents'. The censors later accepted the term ‘military sources', but in one case allowed only ‘informed sources', as ‘military' gave ‘too much weight' to the story. ⁷⁵ However, the clear ‘sourcing' of news was always regarded by Reuters as a crucial reporting duty, ensuring it was not held responsible for false or misleading news and maintained its reputation for accuracy and impartiality. Describing anonymous military sources as ‘informed' meant that Reuters took ‘some responsibility' for what was said; that it believed ‘on the basis of past experience' that the information they imparted was ‘correct, objective and impartial’. That was why Arkus was told by the London head-office that such attributions must be ‘confined to fact' and not attributed to Israeli ‘opinions and interpretations'. ⁷⁶ In June 1972, for instance, two Egyptian Migs were shot down by Israeli jets, but the Egyptians claimed they had themselves downed two Israeli Mirages. ⁷⁷ In response, a Reuters report from Tel Aviv attributed to anonymous ‘Israeli sources' the claim that the Egyptians ‘still publish communiqués which are tales from the Arabian nights’. Maclurkin was aware that it was often necessary to pin statements on ‘Israeli sources', due to censorship. However, ‘what we must not do', he told the Tel Aviv office, was attribute ‘comments and opinions to such shadowy figures’. ⁷⁸ Such ‘impeccable sourcing' of news and comment, the London head-office persistently urged all its correspondents in the region, was crucial to make clear that Reuters was not simply serving as mouth-piece in the ‘propaganda wars' between both sides. ⁷⁹

The dilemma, Arkus explained, was that the sources could be very prominent, often the head of military intelligence, General Aharon Yariv, who would not be quoted by name. London had recently spiked as ‘propaganda' a comment by Yariv – attributed by Arkus to a ‘military source' which was all the censors allowed – that further ‘spectacular' attacks on air travel were soon to be expected. Five days later, at Israel's international airport, three members of the Japanese Red Army killed and wounded many dozens of people. ⁸⁰ However, even ‘with the benefit of hindsight', an internal review of the decision by head-office concluded that doubting the unattributed statement ‘was inevitable'. It was proposed to use the incident to impress on Yariv ‘that he has more chance of publication' if he would go ‘on the record’. ⁸¹ Maclurkin suggested that if Yariv allowed his naming as ‘a high military source', or even better ‘an official military spokesman', this would be preferable to simply ‘an Israeli source'. ⁸² In Israel, as in Egypt and in Syria, Reuters for their own ends urged the authorities to ease restrictions in order to assure publication of their viewpoints.

Despite the occasional hold-up of news by Israeli censorship and the problem of vague ‘sourcing', Reuters never faced in Israel anything close to the pressure and threats to their work reported by staff in the authoritarian Arab countries. Egypt under the rule of President Sadat promised yet again in January 1972 to ease censoring of both the local and foreign press. ⁸³ However, during domestic unrest in early 1973 the government effectively curbed much reporting abroad by Sadat publicly attacking those Egyptians who talked to the foreign press, and by the purging of staff on local newspapers. ⁸⁴ By the summer censorship seemed to become more ‘tolerant', but the London desk was still required to get ‘the point' when receiving ‘curious' formats, or to understand when receiving partial reports on important subjects that the rest was probably ‘in limbo'. ⁸⁵

In Syria, government control of the news was as usual more threatening. In February 1973, trying to check reports of casualties during protests in Hama suppressed by president Hafez al-Assad's regime, al-Husseini was detained by security men for 29 hours. A dispatch on the riots from Reuters in Beirut, based on Lebanese press reports, was withheld from the regional Eastern service, nor could a Beirut report include ‘any “travellers arriving from Syria” stuff'; al-Husseini was warned before being released that as he was ‘exclusive in Hama', it will be known who provided anything that got into the press. However, news of violent clashes in Hama based on ‘informed travelers from Damascus' were reported from Beirut in the New York Times, illustrating the particular vulnerability to government pressure of news agencies, as compared to individual newspapers. ⁸⁶

Much of the day to day global and regional press interest in the Arab–Israeli conflict had focused on Lebanon, which the Palestinian militias had turned into their main base for attacks on Israel after their final expulsion from Jordan in July 1971. ⁸⁷ By the following summer, the Lebanese authorities were increasingly sensitive to media depiction of Beirut as a centre of Palestinian activities, leading to Israeli reprisals. ⁸⁸ Israeli bombing and cross border incursions after the ‘Black September' attack at the Munich Olympics, finally resulted in September 1972 in the imposition of a state of emergency in Lebanon. ⁸⁹ This included the imposition of a strict ‘military censorship' abroad, applied inconsistently but especially harsh on the news agencies, banning ‘any mention' of Palestinian activity. Telephones were tapped and could be cut off. Reuters worked to overcome the restrictions, by reporting censored Palestinian announcements from Amman, Damascus and Cairo. However, it was now very hard to get reports out of Beirut even ‘by pigeon', necessitating in one case bribing a policeman to allow reporters to approach passengers on the other side of customs. A stringer's eye-witness description of Israeli army activity in the south of Lebanon was too risky to dispatch as it would have been ‘too blatant an evasion of censorship' to pretend a Reuters correspondent in Damascus had met ‘travellers arriving from the South Lebanese border zone’. ⁹⁰ Another result of such caution was ‘a bad miss' a few weeks later, when a Palestinian promise to the Lebanese government to avoid giving Israel a pretext to attack Lebanon, was downplayed by the Beirut office out of the otherwise ‘praiseworthy motive of avoiding trouble' with the military censors. ⁹¹ Thus an important and ever-present effect of official censorship could be the self-censoring of reports in advance by the journalists themselves, perhaps even unnecessarily, in order to not to risk the censors’ wrath.

In May 1973, the tension between the Lebanese military and Palestinian groups over attacks on Israel, erupted into a fortnight of bloody clashes, in which the Beirut office headed by Stephen Somerville excelled in producing coverage ‘under conditions of extreme strain and some personal danger', not to mention the ‘strict censorship'. ⁹² The state of emergency was lifted when the fighting ended later that month and with it compulsory censorship of the foreign press. ⁹³ Two months later, Ministry officials threatened to suspend Reuters, cancel the staff's work permits and re-impose censorship; this after it had published a claim of responsibility by an unknown group for the hijacking of a Japanese plane, quoted from a note slipped under the office door. The Ministry claimed this could result in Israeli retaliation. The fact that some Beirut newspapers also published the note seems to have saved the day but Somerville told London that ‘nobody' could tell ‘how and when we or the others may come under the Ministry's wrath’. ⁹⁴

The sudden outbreak of full-scale war in October 1973 dominated world attention and created the regular problems of wartime reporting in the face of strict government censorship and military control. Early success in crossing the Suez Canal probably prompted the Egyptian authorities, who in 1967 had not allowed correspondents close to the front, to conduct a few ‘pooled' trips to the front. ⁹⁵ In Israel, similarly, in the first days no foreign correspondent was let near the front but after the battle turned in Israel's favour, journalists were taken on authorized and chaperoned tours. ⁹⁶ In Syria, as in Egypt, early success seemed to have influenced a more open attitude towards the foreign press; many foreign journalists were allowed into the country, unlike 1967. ⁹⁷ A visiting British correspondent for Reuters was detained and expelled after less than a week of war for making an unauthorized trip outside Damascus. However, this was mostly viewed as a result of the correspondent's own lack of judgment and Ian Macdowall, now a senior editor at the London desk, expressed relief that he ‘fared no worse at the hands of the Syrians, who can be unpredictable in these situations’. ⁹⁸

To conclude, reporting the Arab–Israeli conflict to global audiences in the late 1960s and early 1970s required the Reuters news agency to prevail over numerous government restrictions. These started with constraints on news gathering through restriction of movement and access by correspondents demanded by the Israeli authorities for short periods during times of crisis. A much more serious and persistent difficulty was reporting from the Arab side. Similarly, official prepublication censorship could hold-up news and restrict identification of sources in Israel, but was felt most acutely, in varying degrees, in the authoritarian Arab states.

Nevertheless, it seems that events of wide-enough domestic knowledge could not be held up indefinitely or completely from international audiences. Government censoring apparatus tended to be too inconsistent to be fully effective and the existence of alternative transportation and communication routes in any case seriously limits government control of news flowing abroad. Even in totalitarian Baathist Syria, suppressed news eventually travelled, if only to nearby Beirut where it was picked up by the local and foreign press. Governments also faced persistent public pressure which Reuters staff tried to encourage, to allow greater local press freedom as well as ease prepublication censorship of the foreign media. In the Arab states, such censorship was regarded as a liability in the propaganda war with Israel for western hearts and minds. This is the price of government censorship. Even when confined solely to security matters, censorship frequently stimulates condemnation by provoking media animosity and by giving a permanent impression that there is something to hide.

For their part, Reuters staff in the region devised numerous ploys and methods to get the news to London, spurred by journalistic zeal and competition with other foreign correspondents, particularly rival US and French news agencies. Yet despite eagerness to report and often courageous taking of risks, Reuters staff were careful not to go too far in antagonizing governments. Their co-operation was much needed for the intensive business of collecting news and providing communication facilities, especially in Lebanon where the Reuters regional news centre was situated. In Syria and Jordan where the governments controlled directly most if not all of the domestic media, and to a lesser extent in Egypt, relations with the authorities were crucial for Reuters’ ability to make a local profit through its business of selling news in tight competition with other western news agencies. This most notably and clearly resulted in self-censoring by Reuters of ‘sensitive' news distributed in the region related to Arab discord or conflict with Israel. Regional self-censoring was intended to safeguard the news agency's staff and its commercial interests, the alternative being the self-censoring of particular reports completely, outside the region too. The threat of physical danger in the Arab states came from both state security apparatus and unruly paramilitary forces and keeping its correspondents out of jail or harm's way was a paramount concern for the Reuters management.

During the Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s, this ‘censorship by terror' was particularly rife in Beirut, culminating in the attempted assassination by shooting of the Reuters head of bureau in June 1980. ⁹⁹ Even as technological advances have made formal censoring of news production much harder in the twenty-first century, rigid control of media access to areas of conflict and the problem of journalists' safety, continue to influence reporting on conflicts in the Middle East, as elsewhere. ¹⁰⁰