The Associated Press (better-known as AP), one of the oldest and most reputable news agencies in the world, likes to describe itself as having the same motto as the US marines: First ones in, last ones out. And when it comes to reporting from Nazi Germany, AP was, indeed, the last one out.
Long after other media organizations were kicked out for refusing to comply with the demands of the Nazi regime, AP journalists and photographers went on covering the Nazi agenda and the Second World War from inside Germany. For their extraordinary journalistic achievements, the head of the Berlin Bureau, Louis P. Lochner, a German-American who came to Germany as a lifelong pacifist and then grew increasingly alarmed by the Nazi ideology, was awarded the Pulitzer prize in 1939.
Two years later, when the US entered the war, AP was forbidden to continue operating in Germany. The agency's American employees in Germany were then arrested and sent home five months later as a part of a prisoner exchange. This wasn't unusual. Other news agencies and newspaper correspondents were banned by Germany much earlier. The wonder is that AP was left alone for so long.
That agreement also benefited the Nazis and their propaganda machine.
The explanation for this puzzle was provided last year by a historian named Harriet Scharnberg. In an article published in the academic journal Studies in Contemporary History, Scharnberg claimed that AP was able to preserve its unique status due to a special agreement it had entered into with the Nazis. That agreement made it possible for AP to go on reporting from inside Germany, but it also benefited the Nazis and their propaganda machine.
Scharnberg found out that the AP allowed the Nazis to use their photographs in such anti-Semitic materials as the well-known SS brochure “Der Untermensch” (“The Sub-Human”). Additionally, the agency agreed to employ photographers that were affiliated with the Nazi party (Franz Roth, one of the four photographers employed by AP in Germany during that period, was actually a member of the SS propaganda division), and its representatives signed the infamous 'editor's law' which prohibited them from publishing any material that could 'weaken the Third Reich'.
AP also agreed to the Nazi demand that they would employ only Aryan people; six employees deemed Jews by the Nazis were let go as a consequence. That demand was faced by other media organizations as well - British-American agencies such as Keystone and Wide World Photos are two such examples; they resisted and paid the price.
Last year AP was celebrating its 170th anniversary. Needless to say, Scharnberg's revelations marred the celebration. Critics pointed out that the troubling history of AP brings more focus to their current handling of totalitarian regimes. For example, AP was the first Western organization to open a bureau in North Korea. Have its chiefs reached a secret agreement with Pyongyang, similar to the agreement reached in 1935 with Berlin?
Hoping to silence the critics, AP commissioned its own report of the agency behavior during WWII. This report, written by Larry Heinzerling, an adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and retired AP deputy international editor, was released earlier this month. Predictably, it has absolved AP of the worst accusations.
“We recognize that AP should have done some things differently during this period, for example protesting when AP photos were exploited by the Nazis for propaganda within Germany and refusing to employ German photographers with active political affiliations and loyalties,” the report says. “However, suggestions that AP at any point sought to help the Nazis or their heinous cause are simply wrong".
But the important issue is not if anybody at AP had an interest in helping the Nazis. Nobody has ever claimed that. The point of Scharnberg's article was to show how the AP was ready to give up part of its journalistic integrity in order to retain its access.
The AP's own report also dwells on the role the agency played in exposing the Nazis' crimes to the world. This is doubtless true – but it is also only a part of the story. While reporting about the increasing anti-Semitism in Germany itself, the AP wasn't over-careful to draw attention to the fate of Jews in places occupied by the Nazis. When the German army occupied the city of Lviv (then in Poland, today in Ukraine) the AP didn't publish any reports or pictures describing the massacres of the Lviv Jews that were organized by the Nazis. Instead, the agency went along with the German wish to publish photos of the bodies of the people murdered by the previous occupiers of the city, the Red Army.
The AP report doesn't deny that the organization capitulated and fired its Jewish employees in 1935.
The AP report also doesn't deny that the organization capitulated and fired its Jewish employees in 1935. While expressing regrets over that decision, the report emphasizes that AP helped these people to find new jobs, and to eventually emigrate from Germany to the US. Obviously, it is good to know that these people survived and didn't have to suffer consequences for AP staying put while other agencies were pushed out. But it is hardly praiseworthy to say: 'we fired these people, but we didn't let them die'.
In a world where it has become increasingly difficult to know which news sources and media outlets to trust, this dark chapter in the history of the AP serves as an important reminder. Journalists do important work, but too often they prioritize a good story over anything else. Perhaps the AP reports from Germany told only the truth about Nazi Germany – but it seems unlikely that these reports could ever have given the whole truth. It also seems unlikely, considering the circumstances, that the Nazis would have let the AP become the last Western news agency in Berlin if they hadn't benefited from the situation.
(4) Simcha Talia Hirsch, May 21, 2017 7:41 PM
Media Often Disappoints
I think the media is often disappointing its readers these days. I am disappointed by Jewish News media that none of them, especially since the 9/11 twin tower incident especially and with all the talk of Islamic terrorism have not done any news stories on the various interpretations of the word JIHAD, how the core value of JIHAD is the same in Judaism (yetzer hara and yetzer hatov) and in Christianity, overcoming the evil within oneself and to do the good instead, as it is in Islamic teachings, just different terminology. How this could be educational and help to bring less violence into the world by creating such an article and yet they do not do so. I even have to wonder why such a media site as this has not done a article about JIHAD and all its different interpretations from the factual to the misinterpretation of the world, even by Muslims let alone non-Muslims. If it is a Jewish concept that we are to repair the world and bring peace when we can then it disappoints me that I have yet to see one Jewish news or media source clarify to its readers all the meanings of the word JIHAD and how some Muslims interpret it one way and others yet another way, and how this one word plays such an important part in how Muslims are viewed on the world stage and just how many stereotypes there are out there about this one word, JIHAD.
Anonymous, June 14, 2017 4:29 AM
Do some reading of your own.
You're kidding, right? We've been reassured again and again since 9/11 that "jihad" is not necessarily martial in nature and that Islam is a religion of peace, yada-yada. Fair enough. Islamists don't represent a diverse, billion-strong religious community. But they do seem to command a significant number of adherents, sympathisers, and fellow travellers, all of whom understand jihad as violent, very corporal struggle that reads a great deal like Hitler's struggle (kampf)--against modernity, democracy, and--you guessed it--the Jews, who are in fact central to modern Islamist ideology.
Did you just discover this idea or something? Read up on Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (for whom Hamas has named its Brigades and the rockets it lobs at Israeli civilians, when it's not using more sophisticated material), who is in many ways responsible for reviving the use of "jihad" as a term for political, military, and genocidal programs.
(3) Isahiah62, May 21, 2017 6:01 PM
nothing has changed with AP since
AP is still telling lies about JEWS and the goodness of nazis.. this time the muslim ones- they were complicit and found guilty of fakenews AP FRANCE creation, a Pallywood production called AL Dura- they published a story they KNEW was fictional. FAKED death of a little boy by IDF got many JEWS killed. This LIE is still true in the minds of most Muslims, and Arabs in Gaza, Hebron and many inside Isreal as well. The "photos" are still used in Judenhass lessons for the PA kiddies.
GAZA only allows reporters to see what they allow and controls ALL the news that goes OUT or those reporters get kicked out. So EU gets almost all LIES from wire services when ISRAEL is the topic.
(2) Anonymous, May 21, 2017 3:18 PM
No friend of the workers of the world
The American press has been no friend for the American workers and for the workers around the world.
(1) H.E.Brown, May 21, 2017 2:39 PM
So called mainstream media.
Never ever trust the mainstream media!.Never Never Ever! . Example, in the movie The Godfather, remember the scene when the comment was made, " we have people that are on our payroll don't we" "Yes".