ABSTRACT
In 1929, the British Security Service described a German news organization as a “news-cum-propaganda-cum-espionage (?) service.” This chapter takes that confusion seriously, to understand the blurred boundaries between journalists, propagandists, and spies, examining how the British and Americans interpreted the actions of German journalists working for the same news agency—Transocean—during the Nazi period. While the British worried more about the blurred boundary between news and propaganda, the Americans worried more about the blurred boundary between news and espionage. Legal and cultural explanations around the First Amendment are often seen as the main reasons for differences between the UK and US, but here I offer an institutional explanation. British security agencies were allowed to surveil but did not possess prosecutorial power. When they opened a file on someone, it was for observation rather than because employees necessarily suspected that a crime had been committed. Meanwhile, the Americans were driven by the FBI and Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA. Files were opened with an eye to prosecution and deportation. Both systems led to mass surveillance for often seemingly undeserved reasons. Institutional arrangements and incentives were the key determinants of how British and American officials understood Transocean and tried to define the role of its German employees. To understand how governments interpreted and interacted with journalists, we need to understand how government agencies actually worked.
