Best idea I've heard for a long time! "From the start of the war the British government was eager to control the flow of information from the front line, passing legislation in 1914 which allowed the War Office to censor the press and raising the spectre of the death penalty for anyone convicted of assisting the enemy. Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, had crossed swords with the press in the Sudan and the Boer War and believed battle grounds were the exclusive preserve of the armed forces. Within a year a handful of journalists had become officially ‘embedded’ with the British Army, and at the war’s end a select few would be honoured for their work. But until March 1915 men such as Philip Gibbs and Basil Clarke, who defied the ban, lived like fugitives in France, and smuggled back their dispatches any way they could. What was it like spending the early months of the war living as journalist outlaws?" http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zs9bwmn
The days when journo's were quite searching..even if publishers of time were n ot....not just a tool like most today
"Embedded" journalism often resembles propaganda so much as to be indistinguishable, but at least you know to take the reports "cum grano salis", it's the "independents" you really have to work on to see how much they are "spinning" the facts. The desire to control information by the military is natural, they know "national will" is critical for victory and negative reports can badly affect that (of course controlling the press also helps them to cover up mistakes ). One of the reasons WW1 was such a horrible bloodbath was that generals that though in terms of "cannon fodder" and "favourable attrition" were left in command too long, a more open press may have avoided some of the worst episodes.
I doubt it, as there was the general belief, that "will" made the day, and that one more final "push" would see the enemy crack. Basically, they were at a loss what else to do to resolve the conflict. Just sitting around in trenches wasn't active enough.
