The British press and D-Day: Reporting the launch of the Second Front, 6 June 1944

This article addresses how D-Day and its aftermath were reported in the British press. It focusses on the logistical operation that shaped the news flow from the front line back to the Ministry of Information headquarters at Senate House, London, and out again to British newspaper readers, and explores the extent and range of news reporting that this made possible. It argues that the ways in which the news operation surrounding the D-Day invasion was organised and pursued can best be described as a mutually sustaining collaboration between the military on the one hand and the British media, including the press, on the other. Far from being an independent ‘Fourth Estate’, when it came to D-Day and the Normandy invasion the British newspaper press was—and absolutely considered itself to be —another weapon of war.