A number of underground newsworkers—including Marshall Bloom, Thorne Dreyer, Ray Mungo and Victoria Smith—argued that their papers filled a vacuum left by the collective failure of mainstream media to address the needs of the growing counterculture and anti-Vietnam War movements. This does not mean that the mainstream newsworkers ignored these communities. On the contrary, they actively visualized them as “folk devils” deserving “moral panic.”
In contradistinction to a biased and often distorted treatment, underground newsworkers “regularly . . . reported on the black revolt [the] GI . . . and . . . women’s movement . . . police strategies and attacks, most of it news . . . not deemed fit to print in most respectable organs. They brought criticism of the war and sympathetic treatment of the antiwar movement to soldiers who had no other channels. They made public facts about the movement’s growing net of community institutions. . . . They took the New Left seriously as something to write about, and at their best, probed deeper than did the movement’s own organizational sheets.” (Todd Gitlin, “The Underground Press and its Cave-in,” in Anne Janowitz and Nancy Peters, UnAmerican Activities, San Francisco: City Lights Books (1981), 22.)
The breadth and depth of these concerns reflect well on the intellectual and political vitality of the counterculture/movement. The fact that these movements and activities were all covered in the underground press is indicative of the diversity of these papers and the special relationship between the underground press and its public.
Underground newsworkers did not observe the counterculture and antiwar movement from the sidelines. They actively participated in both. Because they worked long hours for a pittance, however, they depended on community activists to alert them to upcoming demonstrations and cultural events. Their treatment of these events provided a mirror for the community whose activities they publicized, yet it also emboldened the participants to continue organizing and agitating.
As evidenced by the editorials and statements of purpose published in the papers catalogued in this webblog, this interaction lies at the heart of the press relationship with its public, and its differentiation from mainstream media. this was also the case with the GI press.
Believing—like their civilian counterparts—that “Facts [were] less important than truth and [that] the two are far from equivalent,” (Raymond Mungo: Famous Long Ago 69-70) GI newsworkers savaged the work of their mainstream colleagues for never writing anything “controversial, relevant, or interesting.” (“Lies and Half-Truths?” in Broken Arrow 2 [3] (11. 17. 1970), 8.) Likewise, they insisted that GIs could not depend on “Army Times or the Stars and Stripes . . . to tell the truth . . . [or] keep GIs informed about what's going on in other parts of the [world].” (“Ft. Jackson GIs Win Victory,” in Dull Brass 1 [2] (5. 15. 1969), 3.)
In spite of the fact that as artifacts, these GI papers seemed to have been modeled on pre-WWI leftist pamphlets and newspapers rather than the underground press, their staffs were not. Instead, GI newsworkers, like their civilian counterparts, understood themselves to be intimately connected to their public. They did not see themselves as gatekeepers who used the press to provide pro-rated and pre-selected facts. Instead they envisioned themselves as abetters providing a forum that not only expressed their contributors’ “opinion to the utmost,” (“Editorial,” in A’bout Face 1 [6] (12 September 1970), 1.) but kept them “in touch with the ideas and actions of dissent everywhere.” (“Untitled,” in AWOL 1 [11] (undated), 1.)
The fact that both civilian and GI newsworkers understood their relationship with their public in this way is made most clear in their use of “you” and “your” when addressing their audiences. For example, the editor of the civilian underground paper Kaleidoscope claimed that to “continue to exist, to function, to grow” his paper “needs your support.” (“Editorial,” in Kaleidoscope 1 [1], 1) Likewise, the editor of the GI paper Flag in Action, wrote that “Your response will determine” the paper’s “success or failure. Please help us make this project a success. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL UNDERGROUND PAPER!!!” (“Notes from the Staff,” in Flag in Action 1 [1], unpaginated.)
In spite of these similarities there was very real difference between the civilian and military press. Importantly, however, this had nothing to do with the paper’s content and everything to do with the consequences of becoming involved with the movement and its media. Few civilians were arrested for working on or possessing an underground paper.
This was not the case for GIs. Consequently GI newsworkers consistently reminded their public that they should be careful to cover their asses by putting “a fake return address (or none at all) on the envelope to save yourself intimidation and harassment by your company rulers.” (“We Could Be So Good Together,” in The Last Harass 6 (5. 1970), 2.) Like their current counterparts, who author milblogs, GI underground newsworkers were considered to have voluntarily suspended their Constitutional protections, and thus not protected by the First Amendment.
