Women’s Journalism: The Life of Peggy Hull

In American society there have been major developments ranging from the abolishment of slavery to suffrage to the advancement of the information superhighway. These are things for example, that can be recognized by any random American. Feminism is widely known and respected throughout the United States; however, not many people can identify with women’s roles in a specific genre such as journalism during the two world wars. To become acquainted with the advancement of women’s journalism in society, it is necessary to identify first the two broad avenues, mass media and journalism. By grasping these two topics, it will be easier to maintain an understanding of the importance of women’s journalism. After linking mass media and journalism together this writer tells the story of Peggy Hull, one woman’s passion for journalism and trials and tribulations as a war correspondent throughout her life.

Due to the development of mass media communications and women’s journalism careers dating back to WWI, the news, an aspect of mass media has been brought to the public’s attention in the best ways possible. The purpose of the mass media is to inform the public of the news in relation to the government and at wartime. The media is responsible, as the watchdog of the government, to notify any changes that may occur (Dominick, 2002, p.86). A change such as the United States standings during WWII was vital for the public to know. Because the United States was claiming to stay neutral, the people had a right to the awareness of why the U.S. entered the war. The media, otherwise known as the press, plays an important role in educating the public at wartime (Cook, 1920, p.1).

One aspect of mass media, journalism, has played a major part in the reporting of wars. At the time when men were called to fight in WWII and WWI, women had to take on more responsibility especially in professions suited for men. Journalism was one profession that mainly men occupied, but because there was a shortage of men, women stepped in to fill the spots. Although women entered the field of journalism, after WWI, it was common for editors to not give out stories to women that they thought men would report on better (Beasley & Gibbons, 1993, p.131). Women were not respected as hard working individuals like men were, although they were pushed to fulfill roles that men would. Women were needed for more than cooking and cleaning during the war; however, once they demonstrated that they could do male duties, men despised them for it. It was as if women were encouraged to help out, yet they were expected to do a lousy job, and when they proved to be successful the idea came about that women could become a threat to men’s professions. The propaganda that took place during WWII encouraged women to help aid the country, and in turn it might assist in the feminism cause. Because society was focused on getting women involved in the war, it led them to feel more empowered (National Archives and Records Administration, par.5-7). Women liked participating in the workforce; therefore they took their jobs seriously, while men took women’s involvement for granted. At the start of WWI there were women who wanted to travel overseas to pursue lives as war correspondents. Yet, it was hard for them to find the editors to send them. The War Department would in no way give any credit to women covering the fighting during WWI (Edwards, 1988, p.29).

By the time WWII rolled around, the profession of journalism was considered “fairly measured” in terms of women to men. However it was not particularly acceptable for a woman to report the war near the battlefield. They were only expected to report the war on the home front. Although some of them went to the war scene, nearly all of the women were treated poorly and with little respect while there. According to the men, women were considered incompetent to identify with war. They were not encouraged to report the war as much because they were assumed to be dumbfounded when it came to the operations of war. There was few and far between that actually came near the battlefields to report. People believed that the physical stress and mental strain put upon a woman through the war was too great to handle (Voss, 1994, p.81). Nonetheless, some women felt that they could do just as well as men reporters and possibly better. Yet, women’s efforts to convince editors or the War Department to send them to the war were not nearly enough. The only possible way for a woman to be permitted to report near combat was to get “âÂ?¦recognition among newsroom managers and some military officials that perhaps the so-called woman’s angle might be a useful ingredient in the coverage of such phases of WWII as field hospitals and the endeavors of the army and navy’s newly established female service branches…” (p.82).

Women who were working as correspondents were followed around in the war zone by an officer at all times. This was to assure that they did not travel any further into the bounds of the combat than was necessary. At the brink of WWII, women’s journalism roles were taking off due to the shortage of male reporters. One woman in particular went against the overwhelming odds for women journalists in both World Wars II and I. War correspondents were primarily male journalists who reported the wars; however, Henrietta Eleanor Goodnough, otherwise known as Peggy Hull, fought the opposition to become a woman war correspondent (pp.86, 89).

The few women, like Hull, that slipped through to work as war correspondents made a name for themselves and their communities. The lives that they led are historical examples of the evolution of feminism throughout journalism and the professionalism of women as war correspondents (pp.81-89). Hull was the first woman to be accredited as a foreign correspondent, although she was never recognized with any key journalism honors. The articles that she wrote rarely became front-page glory stories and during her early journalism career she had no one to support her to travel overseas. Hull worked in various places such as: Hawaii, New York, Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Mexico, California, among others writing for at least fifteen different newspapers and trying to find her way into the war zone (Belford, 1986, p.190). This writer compiles various records of information to recount as well as commemorate Peggy Hull, the woman who paved her way as a female foreign correspondent.

Hull was born December 30, 1889 on a farm in Bennington, Kansas as the eldest sibling of two. At the age of five her mother divorced her father, which resulted in moving from home to home. Her newspaper career began in Kansas after she stopped attending school at age sixteen. Hull moved around a great deal working as a reporter and journalist, who led her to meet George C. Hull in Denver, the first of her three husbands. She moved with him to Honolulu where she continued working as a reporter for the Honolulu Star. Hull was moving at a fast pace, looking for the best work possible. She loved her husband; however she lacked an attraction to his drinking problem as many women would. After four years, she left George Hull to pursue her dreams (Edwards, 1988, p.43). Hull moved back to the United States to find her first war correspondence experience before WWII in 1914 by traveling to the California-Mexico border with the United States Militia. She was only there for a short four months writing for the San Francisco Weekly; however it was never a setback for Hull, she was gaining experience and making connections with many people. Again, Hull on the go, moved to the job that was open and changed her name to Peggy but kept her married name. In 1916 Hull illustrated in written words while in Mexico for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the actions taking place while the Ohio National Guard was sent to capture Pancho Villa (the Mexican Revolutionary). Following her experiences in Mexico, sleeping on the ground and marching aside the soldiers, although she did not see any fighting, Hull got a taste of the military life which ultimately set her mind determined to become a war correspondent (Belford, 1986, pp.190-91). Because the United States was entering WWI, Hull too decided that she would enter the war; however, she could not get an editor to back her up.

�Hull paid for her own passage to France, charmed a Stated Department official
into issuing a passport, bribed a French consular officer to fet a visa, and arrived in
Paris in time to see the Allied Expeditionary Forces parade for the first time on the
Fourth of July 1917 (Edwards, 1988, p.44).

Hull was not yet in the grind of the war; however she sold articles and stories to the Chicago Tribune edition there in Paris. It labeled Hull as “a typical American woman” with “grit and energy” (Voss, 1994, p.85).

Hull was notified that her mother was sick and she went home to care for her needs in Kansas. This time gave her a chance to think about the options that were available to her and what would be the best decision for her future. It was not until 1918, after WWI had begun that Hull entered the sidelines of the war. She continued to irritate the United States War Department into giving her permission to cover the military expedition that went to Siberia. After reporting in Siberia for nine months she was on her way home, but stopped in China to be secured a job working for the Shanghai Gazette. She promised to return there, and she traveled home (Edwards, 1988, p.48).

At the beginning Hull’s correspondent’s profession, she wore “a trim officer’s tunic, calf-length skirt, polished boots, a Sam Browne belt, and a campaign hat” (Belford, 1986, p.190). A friend of Hull’s described her as:
small, slender, brown-eyed blonde who wore her hair bleached long before it was
fashionable. She was as feminine as a kitten, and she had the will of iron. She was
also the kindest, most generous and compassionate human being I’ve ever known,
a woman all men loved and no woman ever disliked (p.190).

Sadly the accounts she wrote in Siberia did not hold the readers attention; nevertheless Hull set a standard for American journalism. Peggy Hull was at that time accredited as the first woman to be a foreign war correspondent (Voss, 1994, pp.84-87). In Hong Kong she met her second husband, John Kinley, another hard drinker like her first husband. Only two years after they married, Hull returned to work for the Shanghai Gazette and later divorced Kinley. Not long after, she developed a union with the United States by selling them her freelance written articles about the life of people in Asia. She met her third and final husband in New York when she moved there in 1927 to pursue a career as a freelance writer. Harvey Vail Deuell married Peggy Hull in 1933. The Japanese had attacked and Peggy, covering for the New York Daily News where her new husband was the editor, set out to interview the Japanese General Tsai Ting-kai. In a close call Hull found herself hiding in a Chinese bomb shelter and after seeing her chauffeur run in fear and killed she new that the Japanese men would kill her as well. She remembered though in the midst of terror that she had an identification badge given to her by a Japanese admiral. Immediately she pinned it onto herself, let her hair down to acknowledge that she was a woman, and stood up. Because of her quick thinking and bravery, she was taken to a Japanese admiral that she had met previously during her time in Siberia. He was blunt with Hull when he said, “If you do not give up your war corresponding you are surely going to end your life on a battlefield” (Edwards, 1988, p.53).

A short time later, Hull’s happy marriage came to an end in 1939 when her husband surprisingly died of a heart attack on his way to work. After he died she took a brief break from the reporting and the writing scene. However, the boredom and necessity for funds encouraged Hull at the start of WWII to begin reporting again (Belford, 1986, pp.190-195). By WWII Hull was a senior citizen in the reporting occupation compared to the rising involvement of younger reporting women.
Through the later 1930’s and into the 1940’s women journalists were more concerned in following the international affairs between the countries and surprisingly finding a changing attitude from male reporters. Males were not only demonstrating acts of acceptance for women but also holding them in a high regard for the determination and the professionalism they were presenting. However, the reactions the men had at the time may have been due to the fact that the numbers of women pursuing correspondent’s careers were not nearly enough for men to feel threatened (Sebba, 1994, p.147). Despite the fact that Hull was fifty-four years old approaching WWII, she was determined that she would only deliver the news of the war in the Pacific (Belford, 1986, p.195). Hull was restricted to only military bases and hospitals in Hawaii, until 1945 when she was permitted to go see islands that were taken from Japanese power (Voss, 1986, pp.86-87). Hull made it to Guam, Saipan, Guadalcanal, and the New Hebrides of the Pacific islands. Although she covered six war fronts in thirty-one years, Hull basically reported on the woman’s angle. In Guam she was subjected to thousands of injuries, some of which were very gruesome. It was not the thought of her being in danger that bothered her, but it was the thought of writing about it over and over again that affected her. Hull was unable to write about for example, the baskets of amputated arms, legs, and other limbs that were brought in. It was enough that she saw them; she did not want to write about them too. Instead, Hull focused her articles and stories on the experiences of GI’s during the war.

It was WWII and Peggy Hull’s time as an adventurous female war correspondent had taken its toll on her. She lost her spunk as the “I was there” reporter that she had so incredibly been during WWI, in her early years (Edwards, 1988, p.54). The soldiers told her stories about their girlfriends, the mess food, and what they feared the most about being in a war, and only once during the concise Sino-Japanese conflict when the United States troops were not involved did she get to report on combat and troop movements (Belford, 1986, p.189). When Hull was frowned at for wanting to cover the war in the Pacific because of her age and sex, she was quoted as saying, “I’ll never tire of doing this work, and as long as we have American boys in isolated parts of the world, I want to write their story for them” (p.190). In the Pacific while she worked at the hospitals and bases, she wrote “motherly” stories about soldiers that were intended to comfort nervous families. Her compilations of stories were written in a relaxed, sensitive and a heartrending style (Caldwell, 1999, p.294). In one small piece she wrote almost poetically:

Today I am writing my first story in the Second World War. I am writing while
planes drum and sputter across a blue sky filled with tiny white puffs of clouds;
while a turtle dove croons persuasively in a palm tree outside my room and flocks
of birds scramble and fight for the crumbs I have just thrown to them
a touching outlook and again “motherly” perspective of her first experiences during WWII (Belford, 1986, pp.195-196).
After the war Hull returned home and wrote a few of her memoirs, though she never published them. Not many of her works were published, besides in newspapers. In addition, Hull put insight into the stories she wrote about soldiers, with emotion and kindness. She verified that a woman can do the man’s job as being a foreign correspondent, and to be successful women should work alone as freelancers. Because Hull was able to talk her way into assignments she made it as a foreign correspondent during both WWII and I. Written in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, a conclusion to an article written by Hull, “to know the fullness of a well-rounded life it is necessary to have struggled; to have pitted one’s initiative and courage and wits in a competitive field, to have ventured into the world with ideas and hopes and projects”, this may also be a summarization and an admirable conclusion to the life of Peggy Hull. Cancer hit in her old age and she died alone on June 19, 1967 at seventy-seven in a hospital in Monterey, California (Belford, 1986, p.196).

Women like Peggy Hull, though there were few, lived determined lives. Without their existence, journalism may have resulted in still today being a male oriented profession. It is women who surpass overwhelming odds that make females eligible to perform so-called male tasks. War correspondent careers were presumed as a man’s job, just as fighting in the war was presumed to be a man’s job during WWII and WWI. Especially in the first war, women were given what was called, “The Silent Treatment”. When a woman did make it to the front lines of the war, which was rare, men sent them to the back where they would receive no credit from any of the male correspondents for risking themselves to report the war. One woman for example, who in Belgium in 1915 felt she was the closest woman to report in the war zone because she had gotten in the bounds of two-hundred yards of the German lines. When she came back to her home she wrote, “My heavy boots chafe my heel, and I limp. But I limp rapidly. I do not care to be shot in the backâÂ?¦. I have done what no woman has done before, and I am alive. But my heel hurts”; however, she received no credit because she was given the silent treatment from fellow male correspondents due to their feelings of intimidation (Edwards, 1988, p.25).

In contrast, today women are known world wide for the hard work that they do, as well as men. Connie Chung is a well-known news anchor to American’s. Although people may not be able to put her name with a face or with her profession, it does ring a bell in the mind that she is a famous person in The United States. This goes to show that there are women known today just as well as men for performing the jobs that one day were considered male professions. Times have changed and due to the women’s movement, America has become a greater nation. Every aspect of life has evolved including women’s rights and mass media.

The mass media has become a social window of opportunity ranging from professions to the jobs it performs. It is the connection between the news and the people. Within this broad medium are areas of specification. An important area, journalism, is one that has distinctively progressed and matured. It brings the importance of the news and entertainment to the people. The public depends upon journalists and reporters to supply the latest breaking stories and phenomena’s occurring in a community. For instance, in the event of a war the public desires to know everything possible about the situation. If journalists and war correspondents did not cover the actions then the nation’s people would be left in the dark.
Without the help of women during WWII and WWI, there would not have been nearly enough coverage to present to the public. Despite the fact that newspapers were directed at men’s interests, women were hired to do as little damage as possible by writing little columns about politics and business. Editors were reluctant to let women write from their points of views; however, little by little experimentation with women’s written stories was common. Feminism was slowly jump started into journalism at the brink of WWI due to overachievers like Peggy Hull and it has continued to carry on (Belford, 1986, p.1).

References
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Dominick, J. R. (2002). The dynamics of mass communication. Boston: McGraw
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Edwards, J. (1988). Women of the world. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Sebba, A. (1994). Battling for the news. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Voss, F. (1994). Reporting the war. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
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