In January 1916 a party of journalists from seven Irish newspapers visited Irish regiments serving on the western front. Such a privilege came at a price. Organised by the department of recruiting for Ireland, it was made clear to the journalists that this embedded tour had an agenda: they were ‘to set down what they saw there for the benefit of recruiting in Ireland’. This article examines the extent to which the three national titles included on the tour accepted this role of communicating and legitimising recruitment policy. It sheds light on the involvement of two national newspaper editors in shaping recruitment policy in Ireland, illustrates how each of the three national titles reported the tour, and examines the effects such reportage had on recruiting in Ireland.