As the navy began its first major offensive battles in late 1943, it went to great lengths to ensure a better press. Robert Sherrod of Time magazine was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this new policy, although at Tarawa he was lucky to survive the carnage of invasion day. Sherrod’s reporting on this battle, along with vivid visual images of the fighting, underlined the toughness of the fighting in the central Pacific. His experiences also made him a fierce partisan of the Marines, a fact that subsequently exacerbated the tension between the Marines and the army when Holland Smith relieved Ralph Smith during the Saipan invasion. Sherrod’s reporting on this controversy was extremely controversial, but he became convinced that the main takeaway from Saipan was the media’s continued neglect of the Pacific War.