At the end of July, 1914, it became clear to the British government that the country was on the verge of war with Germany. Four senior members of the government, Charles Trevelyan, David Lloyd George, John Burns, and John Morley, were opposed to the country becoming involved in a European war and they informed the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, that they intended to resign over the issue. When war was declared on 4th August, three of the men, Trevelyan, Burns and Morley, resigned, but Asquith managed to persuade Lloyd George, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, to change his mind.

David Lloyd George now became one of the main figures in the government willing to escalate the war in an effort to bring an early victory. Lloyd George was quick to realize that it would be important to persuade newspaper editors to fully support the war. His most important achievement was to persuade C. P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, to give its backing to the government. Scott, like Lloyd George, had been one of the leaders of the anti-war group during the Boer War. Charles Trevelyan was especially disappointed with Scott's change of views as he had expected the Manchester Guardian to support his anti-war organisation, the Union of Democratic Control (UDC).

Lord Kitchener, the War Minister, was determined not to have any journalists reporting the war from the Western Front. He instead appointed Colonel Ernest Swinton, to write reports on the war. These were then vetted by Kitchener before being sent to the newspapers. Later in 1914, Henry Major Tomlinson, a journalist working for the Daily News, was recruited by the British Army as its official war correspondent.

Some journalists were already in France when war was declared in August 1914. Philip Gibbs, a journalist working for The Daily Chronicle, quickly attached himself to the British Expeditionary Force and began sending in reports from the Western Front. When Lord Kitchener discovered what was happening he ordered the arrest of Gibbs. After being warned that if he was caught again he "would be put up against a wall and shot", Gibbs was sent back to England.

Hamilton Fyfe of the Daily Mail and Arthur Moore of The Times managed to send back reports but these were rewritten by F. E. Smith, the head of the government's Press Bureau. Smith often manipulated the stories in order to shape public opinion. For example, in Moore's report on the Battle of Mons, Smith added the passage: "The BEF requires immediate and immense reinforcement. It needs men, men, and yet more men. We want reinforcements and we want them now."

Other journalists such as William Beach Thomas of the Daily Mail and Geoffrey Pyke of Reuters, who were still in France, were arrested and accused by the British authorities of being spies. Henry Hamilton Fyfe of the Daily Mail was also threatened with arrest and he overcame the problem by joining the French Red Cross as a stretcher bearer. In this way he was able to continue reporting on the war in France for a couple more months. However, the British military caught up with Fyfe and he decided to leave and report on the Eastern Front where journalists were still able to report on the war without restrictions.

In January, 1915, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, received a letter from the former American president, Theodore Roosevelt. He warned Grey that the policy of preventing journalists from reporting the war was "harming Britain's cause in the United States." After a Cabinet meeting on the subject, the government decided to change its policy and to allow selected journalists to report the war. Five men were chosen: Philip Gibbs (Daily Chronicle and the Daily Telegraph), Percival Philips (Daily Express and the Morning Post), William Beach Thomas (Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror) Henry Perry Robinson (The Times and the Daily News) and Herbert Russell (Reuters News Agency). Before their reports could be sent back to England, they had to be submitted to C. E. Montague, the former leader writer of the Manchester Guardian.

Over the next three years other journalists such as John Buchan, Valentine Williams, Hamilton Fyfe and Henry Nevinson, became accredited war correspondents. To remain on the Western Front, these journalists had to accept government control over what they wrote. Even the disastrous first day of the Battle of the Somme was reported as a victory. Later William Beach Thomas admitted that he was "deeply ashamed of what he had written" but Philip Gibbs defended his actions by claiming that he was attempting to "spare the feelings of men and women, who, have sons and husbands fighting in France".

After the war most of the accredited war correspondents were offered knighthoods by George V. Some like Philip Gibbs, Herbert Russell, Henry Perry Robinson and William Beach Thomas, agreed to accept the offer. However, others like Hamilton Fyfe, Robert Donald and Henry Nevinson refused. Fyfe saw it as a bribe to keep quiet about the inefficiency and corruption he had witnessed during the war, whereas Nevinson feared it might influence his freedom to report political issues in the future.