War Reporting, NY Times WWII Examples

Dhimmi Watch has an interesting post on what the NY Times did during WWII - much the same as it is doing today. It dovetails nicely with my complaints about war reporting, comparing WWI to today. The Dhimmi Watch post is less about the substance and more about the selection of the reporting. Everyone knows, or should know, about Walter Duranty. We’ve certainly seen the Gray Lady minimize reporting on good news in Iraq and Afghanistan since almost the beginning of the war, and we’ve seen one of their reporters embed with the enemy and write a book about the enemy’s brave struggle. As it turns out, the Times had a similar track record in WWII, at least in some areas:

It also did a terrible job in its reporting on Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and the persecution of Jews throughout the 1930s, and then of course, on the mass round-ups (”Aktion”) and murders during the war. Many things were not mentioned at all. Others were relegated to tiny paragraphs deep inside the paper. You can read all about it in excellent book by Laurie Leff (of Northeastern University).

Because of the miserable coverage of the Nazi war against the Jews, many of the readers of The Times, and readers of other less well-endowed newspapers that did not have foreign bureaus but took their lead from The Times, never published the truth. And many readers of The Times had relatives in Europe, and could have done things to save them, had they been properly informed, properly alarmed. And perhaps, too, those in Washington who treated the groups of Orthodox rabbis who went to Washington to implore that something be done, might have done more, might have done something, anything. Instead, they let a cabal of antisemites stymie their efforts. These included Breckenridge Long in the State Department — see “The Truth About the State Department” by William Bendiner, a pamphlet written during the war, who was determined to keep Jewish refugees out, and John J. McCloy, that swinish “pillar of the establishment.” As Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, McCloy prevented the bombing of the rail lines to Auschwitz, even though American bombers were successfully destroying targets just a few miles away. One of the pilots on the first daylight bombing raids over Berlin, incidentally, and a recipient of the Medal of Honor, was one of my relatives. He and those who flew with him would have gladly bombed any rail-lines leading to death camps, had they only been given the information, and the target.

I’ve emailed Fitzgerald at Dhimmi Watch to learn more about the Laurie Leff book he references. At minimum, it looks like NYT WWII reporting was a very mixed bag, from the hyper-patriotic on some topics to downright antisemitic and quisling on others. Between her book and some other WWII journalism books I’m checking out, maybe a fuller picture is available.