Buried by the Times, a book by Laurel Leff, Associate Professor of Journalism at Northeastern University, is an important report of The New York Times range> coverage about atrocities Nazis against Jews culminating in the Holocaust. The book argues that the news was often buried in the backyard partly because of the view of Judaism Jewish newspaper publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. It also provides a critical view on the work of Europe correspondent Times .
Video Buried by the Times
Argument
Placement of news articles
The placement of news articles in the newspaper is a good indication of the importance given by the newspaper to a story. The Times consistently puts the main story of Nazi treatment of European Jews in the backyard "by soap and shoe-shine ads." Leff discovered that during the period from September 1939 to May 1945 there were very few stories about Jewish victims making the front page of the Times. "The story of the Holocaust - which means an article focusing on discrimination, deportation, and destruction of Jews - makes the front page of the Times only 26 times, and only in six of those stories are Jews identified on the front as the main victims. "
Terminology
Leff points out that the Times often use more general terms such as refugees or citizenship to refer to Jewish Nazi victims. In his review, Gal Beckerman writes, "More surprising than burying articles chronically with the word ' Jew ' in them is how often the word is removed from articles that specifically deal with the condition Jews.This is almost real at the time.How could you possibly tell the story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising without mentioning the Jews? But The Times do it, illustrate how ' 500,000 people... herded to less than 7 percent of Warsaw's buildings, ' and how ' 400,000 people were deported ' to Death at Treblinka, as Leff wrote, The Times , when posting articles on the front page, describing refugees seeking refuge, French facing foreclosures, or civilians who died in German camps, without clarifying refugees, people France, and most civilians Jews. ' " The role of religion
Sulzberger was a reassured Jewish Reformer who was the basis of his assimilationist approach: Judaism to him was only a religion and that Jews were not race or people over Presbyterian or Methodist were races. In December 1942 in a memo to the staff of the New York Times he wrote, "I have tried to instruct the people around here about the problem of the word 'Jew', that is, they are not race or person, etc.," Former journalist > New York Times Ari Goldman, in his review of the book, writes: "There is little doubt that Sulzberger's view of Judaism trickled into the editor made decisions about what to put in the newspaper, every day."
Staff bias
Leff checks the attitudes and performance of reporting and editorial staff Time '. On the ground, "He shows the annoying Nazi and Vichy attachments of several European correspondents." On his return to New York, Sulzberger's bias was disseminated by other Jewish staff: "Among them and influential Catholics among the crucial night editors, who decide where to place news items, the Jews who are threatened in Europe are not have a lawyer in the editorial room. "
Maps Buried by the Times
Conclusion
Blaming the lack of coverage: In addition to the bias and lack of competence of European correspondents, Leff "pointed out the problem with the current journalistic convention, which prefers to reprint government statements to unearth unknown stories, and of course, the disorganized Jewish community and the Roosevelt government too busy with war, the two did not push hard enough for front page coverage. But most of the errors, in Leff's words, fell right at the foot of Sulzberger Publisher's The Times Publisher. "
Some observers have observed how the very bad information of American society is about the systematic killings of European Jews by the Nazis. Leff pointed out that the way the Holocaust cover "contributes to public ignorance." But besides giving bad information to the public, " The Times coverage ' is very important," he wrote, "because other observers, especially the American government, American Jewish groups, and more the American press, taking a cue from the paper.Among the major American newspapers, it's unique in the information it receives, how it spreads the word, and to whom. "
Reception
Most of the reviews are very positive. The British historian David Cesarani, reviewing a book in the Jewish Chronicle, writes: "The light that Laurel Leff infuses on US government policy adds to his documented and thoughtful research value.This is a research model with serious implications for how the press includes atrocities and genocide in our day own. "
Another Holocaust historian Tim Cole, who writes in the Journal of Jewish Studies shows the broader benefits of this research: "Laurel Leff's study of Holocaust reporting on the pages of The New York Times did more than just filling the gap by offering an in-depth study of America's most important daily... his book stands as a model for future studies in this sub-field of Holocaust Studies... [and] makes an interesting book not only for those who want to know what is reported on the Holocaust. "Leff's research offers wider insight into American Jews in wartime, and in particular the relationship between an American Jew and his Jewishness.
Professor of journalism at Columbia University (and former reporter of the New York Times) Ari Goldman commented: "... Laurel Leff, in his excellent book, Buried by The Times, built a strong and convincing case that The The Times is deliberately downplaying the main story for not wanting to stand up for the Jewish goal.As his observation of the use of the wire story, many of Leff's speculations can not be verified, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that editors are motivated by more than just news Leff documents this in great detail both in terms of what was published by The Times and in terms of his publisher's opinion at the time, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. "
Throughout the book, Leff's anger about The Times behavior is very clear. Beckerman's positive comments on it: "Under every word of Laurel Leff's extraordinary and enormous new study of The New York Times ' s coverage of what we now call the Holocaust is this same wish - for the paper to be shocked and outraged beyond the very black-and-white border. "
However one reviewer criticized his approach. "The tone of Leff's account is one of his unrelenting anger.When The Times fails to report any events related to the Holocaust, he is angry.If the paper reports him, he is angry that the report is not on the page When the Holocaust story is on the front page, he complains that it is not high enough on the front page.When there is no editorial on some topics related to the Holocaust, he is angry, and if there is an editorial, he is angry that it is not the main editorial. often angry when reportage or comment, wherever placed, not mentioning the Jews themselves but also other victims.When one item explained that the majority of those killed on the premises were Jews, he complained that this was recorded "only once" in the story All of this is so over-the-top to approach self-parody. "
Finally, former executive editor of the NYT and Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Max Frankel used Leff's initial research as a reference to his criticizing article > ' s reporting the Holocaust in his 150th birthday in 2001. He writes: "As Laurel Leff, assistant professor at Northeastern School of Journalism, has concluded, it is a tragic demonstration of how the ' facts are not Speak to herself. ' She has been the most persistent independent student of the The Times' Holocaust coverage and is quick to summarize her findings last year at the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. ' You can read the front page of The New York Times in 1939 and 1940, "he wrote," without knowing that, millions of Jews were sent to Poland, imprisoned in the ghetto , and died of disease and famine by the pul god of thousands. You can read the front page in 1941 without knowing that the Nazis were machine guns of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Soviet Union. "Frankel called it" the most journalistic failure of the century. "
Awards and awards
- The best media history book, American Journalism Historians Association
- The best history books, Preface Magazine
Related jobs
Leff's ongoing work on America's response to the Holocaust continues to attract comments. His research paper "Refusing Refugee Journalists: The Failure of Professions to Help Jews Persecuted by Nazi Germany" insists that journalists, unlike doctors and lawyers, fail to set up committees to help Jewish refugees secure positions that will free them from immigration limits and allow them to come to the United States, inspired a campaign to get the American Newspapers Association to recognize his predecessor's organization in the 1930s "wrong to divert his attention to Jewish refugee Journalists who fled from Hitler". The Newspaper Association of America responded by issuing a regretting statement that its predecessor organization did not provide full public exposure to the problem at the time and by holding a special session on the topic at its annual meeting.
References
External links
- Laurel Leff, Buried by The Times : The Holocaust and the most important American newspaper (lectures given at Oregon State University)
- Interview with Laurel Leff (from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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