{"id":71374,"date":"2016-04-04T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71374"},"modified":"2016-04-02T15:38:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T14:38:01","slug":"revealed-how-associated-press-cooperated-with-the-nazis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/04\/revealed-how-associated-press-cooperated-with-the-nazis\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: How Associated Press Cooperated with the Nazis"},"content":{"rendered":"

German historian shows how news agency retained access in 1930s by promising not to undermine strength of Hitler regime.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"SS<\/a>

SS pamphlet \u2018The Sub-Human\u2019, using photographs by Associated Press. Photograph: AP<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Mar 2016 – <\/em>The Associated Press<\/a> news agency entered a formal cooperation with the Hitler regime in the 1930s, supplying American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry, archive material unearthed by a German historian has revealed.<\/p>\n

When the Nazi party seized power in Germany in 1933, one of its first objectives was to bring into line not just the national press, but international media too. The Guardian was banned within a year<\/a>, and by 1935 even bigger British-American agencies such as Keystone and Wide World Photos were forced to close their bureaus after coming under attack for employing Jewish journalists.<\/p>\n

Associated Press, which has described itself as the \u201cmarine corps of journalism\u201d (\u201calways the first in and the last out\u201d) was the only western news agency able to stay open in Hitler\u2019s Germany<\/a>, continuing to operate until the US entered the war in 1941. It thus found itself in the presumably profitable situation of being the prime channel for news reports and pictures out of the totalitarian state.<\/p>\n

In an article published in academic journal Studies in Contemporary History<\/a> , historian Harriet Scharnberg shows that AP was only able to retain its access by entering into a mutually beneficial two-way cooperation with the Nazi regime.<\/p>\n

The New York-based agency ceded control of its output by signing up to the so-called Schriftleitergesetz <\/em>(editor\u2019s law), promising not to publish any material \u201ccalculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home\u201d.<\/p>\n

This law required AP to hire reporters who also worked for the Nazi party\u2019s propaganda division. One of the four photographers employed by the Associated Press in the 1930s, Franz Roth, was a member of the SS paramilitary unit\u2019s propaganda division, whose photographs were personally chosen by Hitler. AP has removed Roth\u2019s pictures from its website since Scharnberg published her findings, though thumbnails remain viewable due to \u201csoftware issues\u201d.<\/p>\n

AP also allowed the Nazi regime to use its photo archives for its virulently antisemitic propaganda literature. Publications illustrated with AP photographs include the bestselling SS brochure \u201cDer Untermensch\u201d (\u201cThe Sub-Human\u201d) and the booklet \u201cThe Jews in the USA\u201d, which aimed to demonstrate the decadence of Jewish Americans with a picture of New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia eating from a buffet with his hands.<\/p>\n

Coming just before Associated Press\u2019s 170th anniversary in May, the newly discovered information raises not just difficult questions about the role AP played in allowing Nazi Germany to conceal its true face during Hitler\u2019s first years in power, but also about the agency\u2019s relationship with contemporary totalitarian regimes.<\/p>\n

While the AP deal enabled the west to peek into a repressive society that may otherwise have been entirely hidden from view \u2013 for which Berlin correspondent Louis P Lochner won a Pulitzer in 1939 \u2013 the arrangement also enabled the Nazis to cover up some of its crimes. Scharnberg, a historian at Halle\u2019s Martin Luther University, argued that AP\u2019s cooperation with the Hitler regime allowed the Nazis to \u201cportray a war of extermination as a conventional war\u201d.<\/p>\n

In June 1941, Nazi troops invaded the town of Lviv in western Ukraine. Upon discovering evidence of mass killings carried out by Soviet troops, German occupying forces had organised \u201crevenge\u201d pogroms against the city\u2019s Jewish population.<\/p>\n

Franz Roth\u2019s photographs of the dead bodies inside Lviv prisons were selected upon Hitler\u2019s personal orders and distributed to the American press via AP.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of printing pictures of the days-long Lviv pogroms with its thousands of Jewish victims, the American press was only supplied with photographs showing the victims of the Soviet police and \u2018brute\u2019 Red Army war criminals,\u201d Scharnberg told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo that extent it is fair to say that these pictures played their part in disguising the true character of the war led by the Germans,\u201d said the historian. \u201cWhich events were made visible and which remained invisible in AP\u2019s supply of pictures followed German interests and the German narrative of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nazi<\/a>

Nazi party newspaper V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter, using photographs by AP photographer Franz Roth. Photograph: AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Approached with these allegations, AP said in a statement that Scharnberg\u2019s report \u201cdescribes both individuals and their activities before and during the war that were unknown to AP\u201d, and that it is currently reviewing documents in and beyond its archives to \u201cfurther our understanding of the period\u201d.<\/p>\n

An AP spokesperson told the Guardian: \u201cAs we continue to research this matter, AP rejects any notion that it deliberately \u2018collaborated\u2019 with the Nazi regime. An accurate characterisation is that the AP and other foreign news organisations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler\u2019s coming to power in 1932 until the AP\u2019s expulsion from Germany in 1941. AP management resisted the pressure while working to gather accurate, vital and objective news in a dark and dangerous time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new findings may only have been of interest to company historians, were it not for the fact that AP\u2019s relationship with totalitarian regimes has once again come under scrutiny. Since January 2012, when AP became the first western news agency to open a bureau in North Korea, questions have repeatedly been raised about the neutrality of its Pyongyang bureau\u2019s output.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Washington-based website NK News alleged <\/a>that top executives at AP had in 2011 \u201cagreed to distribute state-produced North Korean propaganda through the AP name\u201d in order to gain access to the highly profitable market of distributing picture material out of the totalitarian state. The Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea comes second from bottom in the current World Press Freedom Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A leaked draft agreement<\/a> showed that AP was apparently willing to let the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) handpick one text and one photo journalist from its agitation and propaganda unit to work in its bureau. AP told the Guardian that \u201cit would be presumptuous to assume \u2018the draft\u2019 has any significance\u201d, but declined to disclose further information on the final agreement.<\/p>\n

Significant events, reported in the international media, were not covered by AP\u2019s Pyongyang bureau, such as the six-week public disappearance of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in September and October 2014, the November 2014 Sony Entertainment hack that had allegedly been orchestrated by a North Korean cyberwarfare agency, or a reports of a famine in South Hwanghae province in 2012.<\/p>\n

When the French news agency Agence France-Presse signed an agreement to open a bureau in Pyongyang in January this year, AP\u2019s former Pyongyang bureau chief Jean Lee commented<\/a> that it was a sign of the regime\u2019s \u201cincreased confidence in its ability to keep foreign journalists under control\u201d.<\/p>\n

The AP spokesperson denied that the agency submitted to censorship. \u201cWe do not run stories by the Korean Central News Agency or any government official before we publish them. At the same time, officials are free to grant or deny access or interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nate Thayer, a former AP correspondent in Cambodia who published the leaked draft agreement, told the Guardian: \u201cIt looks like AP have learned very little from their own history. To claim, as the agency does, that North Korea does not control their output, is ludicrous. There is naturally an argument that any access to secretive states is important. But at the end of the day it matters whether you tell your readers that what you are reporting is based on independent and neutral sources\u201d.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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