The Information Front:
The Canadian Army and News Management
during the Second World War
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by Timothy Balzer
UBC Press, Vancouver, 2011
271 pp., illus, $32.95 paperback
Everyone has heard the saying “loose lips sink ships.” In war, a slip of the tongue can lead to disaster, especially if one is inadvertently leaking secret information such as tactics or troop numbers and movements.
In The Information Front, Timothy Balzer explores the efforts of the Canadian military to control the media during the Second World War. When things went well, army officials pushed to ensure that troops received full credit. When things went badly, like they did during the disastrous Dieppe raid of 1942, the spin doctors went to work, diffusing the blame and massaging the narrative to transform a bloody defeat into a noble and necessary sacrifice that offered crucial lessons for future military successes.
Balzer has taught at the University of Victoria and the Royal Military College of Canada, and he writes with an academic tone. The book includes almost forty pages of appendices and notes, and the final chapter is titled “Conclusion.”
If you’re looking for a rousing popular history-style tale of Canada’s journalists and the military men who sought to tame them, this isn’t it. But The Information Front does provide crucial insight into the war over words that was waged behind the scenes during World War II.
— Mark Collin Reid (Read bio)
Mark Collin Reid is the Editor-in-Chief of Canada's History.