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Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the Holocaust SHOAH IN THE NEWS: Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the Holocaust by James Carroll The Joan Shorenstein Center PRESS POLITICS Discussion Paper D-27 October 1997 PUBLIC POLICY Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government SHOAH IN THE NEWS: Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the Holocaust by James Carroll Discussion Paper D-27 September 1997 INTRODUCTION James Carroll, for whom “why?” is a fre- close people are attempting to define its princi- quent question and “ethics” a compelling con- pal characteristics. Among them none appar- cern, spent his springtime ’97 fellowship at the ently stands more gauntly on center stage than Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and the Holocaust. “The Nazi death camps,” writes Public Policy at Harvard researching and writing Carroll, “have become the pre-eminent symbol this extraordinary essay. “Shoah in the News: of the world gone mad, a distillation of the evil Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the that swamped the century.” Holocaust” is a thoughtful, provocative and The Holocaust, as a news story, has a very powerful study that deserves wide distribution strange, twisted history. During the war, when and analysis. it occurred, it barely intruded into the main- Carroll, who is a columnist for the Boston stream press. Intelligence filtered out of the Globe and author of many books, including An Third Reich to the effect that hundreds of thou- American Requiem: God, My Father, and the sands and later millions of Jews were being sys- War That Came Between Us, which won the tematically slaughtered—gassed and burned by 1996 National Book Award, raises a set of ques- the ovenful; and yet when occasionally this tions that at first seems only fascinating but on news appeared in the New York Times or the closer examination emerges as a profound por- Boston Globe, it was almost as an afterthought, trait of the press, politics and personal loss—and a brief three or four paragraph story on page 15, in the background yet another question that has a neutral bow in the direction of historic horror. absorbed Carroll for many years: what explains Even when the war in Europe ended on May 8, the Vatican’s problematic approach to the 1945, Times correspondent C. L. Sulzberger Holocaust? reported from Moscow that 4,000,000 people Carroll in this essay examines the years had been killed at the Nazi death camp at l995-1997 and wonders why, after decades of Auschwitz. Though he himself was Jewish and a soft-pedaling the story and for many years sim- member of the Sulzberger family, which owned ply ignoring it, the press has suddenly been the Times, he did not mention the rather devoting so much front-page attention to the inescapable fact that most of the victims were Holocaust. More than 600 stories have appeared Jewish. in the New York Times in this relatively brief After the war, as one decade of cold war period—just about one a day. Thousands of oth- rolled into another, leading to the 50th anniver- ers have appeared in other American media. sary celebrations of the end of World War II, Whether the stories have focused on Swiss Carroll notes in his careful research that there banks, plundered artwork, Madeleine Albright’s were appropriate moments when the Holocaust recently-discovered Jewish roots or Daniel was mentioned in the press—in 1965, on the Goldhagen’s book on Hitler’s Willing 20th anniversary of the discovery of the death Executioners, the Holocaust angle has been camps, in 1985, on the 40th anniversary—but it prominently featured. was rare. Indeed, the word “holocaust” did not Why? Why now? “What historical event,” appear in the Times index until 1980. Carroll asks, “has generated as much or more In 1995-1997, though, as the Holocaust news coverage” fifty years after it was first became big news in the American media, for reported, in the spring of 1945, as this one? reasons Carroll discusses, the stories broke into Other 50th anniversary stories, such as the end four categories: confessions, challenges, newly- of World War II and the first use of atomic discovered information and finally old informa- weapons in war, were also treated as major sto- tion freshly-packaged. Confessions included ries in 1995, but two years later they could no powerful statements by leaders, such as, longer lay claim to the front page of any news- Germany’s von Weizacker in 1985 and Poland’s paper. They were already comfortably ensconced Lech Walesa in 1991. Challenges pitted Jewish as history. But not so the Holocaust, which not leaders against Swiss banks and French art only remained a major story but seemed almost dealers. New information highlighted declassi- to grow in scope. Part of the reason would fied U.S. and Soviet archival data. Old informa- appear to be that as this millennium draws to a tion, republished with a new top, also became James Carroll 1 big news, and this struck Carroll as “most civilization before the 20th century enters the provocative.” history books. The press in this sense belatedly After all, it had been known for some time performs a role it should have addressed far that the Nazis had stashed much of their plun- more seriously half a century ago. Carroll der in secret Swiss accounts and that many could—perhaps, should—have been more criti- Jews, “as they saw the Nazi cloud approach,” cal of the press’s performance on this story. had put their assets into Swiss banks, assuming As Carroll concludes his essay, he reaches both confidentiality and financial security. for Kierkegaard. Life is lived forward, the Those Jews killed in the camps never returned philosopher once said, but understood backward. to claim their assets, and the accounts grew. In Carroll carries the thought one step further. the 1970s and 1980s, this story appeared in “Journalism has to keep its eyes pointed in both many newspapers and magazines, though it was directions.” usually not fronted or featured, and in the early 1990s John Loftus, who once headed the State Marvin Kalb Department’s Office of Special Investigations, Edward R. Murrow Professor wrote two books (Unholy Trinity in 1992 and Director, The Joan Shorenstein Center on The Secret War Against the Jews in 1994) detail- the Press, Politics and Public Policy ing the exceptional story of secret Swiss bank John F. Kennedy School of Government accounts opened decades before by the Nazis Harvard University and by Jews fleeing the Nazis. And yet, obvi- ously, the story of the secret Swiss bank accounts did not make any waves—there was, to use publishing parlance, no buzz. As late as 1992, a Nexis search of the Times produced not a single news story. In 1995, according to Carroll’s research, there were only four stories. Then the latest remarkable chapter in the Holocaust story began—two years of one story after another, from every possible angle; and there does not yet appear to be a let-up. Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that the “aging and dying people” of the World War II genera- tion are coming to terms with the “unfinished business”of those years. Carroll notes deathbed revelations by Poles, French and Dutchmen to their middle-aged sons and daughters that they were really born Jews. Or maybe it takes fifty years to be able to face the truth of what Carroll calls “a continent-wide complicity” in the mur- der of millions of innocent people. Carroll in fact cites many possible explana- tions for the upsurge of press interest in the Holocaust, but he returns to one more often than to any other—the approaching end of the 20th century springing memory and conscience to face the truth of a terrible crime. Swiss President Arnold Koller, speaking in March, 1997, said: “We cannot and must not leave the century in a state of uncertainty, confusion, and embarrassment.” The press helps this educa- tional process, not only reporting such gripping stories as Albright’s religious roots, deathbed revelations, Swiss bank accounts and new archival discoveries focusing on old and embar- rassing secrets but by reporting on all these issues helping to wash clean the conscience of 2 Shoah in the News SHOAH IN THE NEWS: PATTERNS AND MEANINGS OF NEWS COVERAGE OF THE HOLOCAUST by James Carroll I. Jews Out tive name from smashed glass. The New York Times would be typical of the American news On Friday, November 11, 1938, automobile media in the scant attention it paid in the early traffic in New York City halted at exactly 11 1940s to the unfolding horror of the anti-Jewish A.M. For two minutes no car, bus or truck genocide: the Times was nearly silent about the moved, and no horn sounded. Taps was blown Final Solution as it occurred. What stories it did in Times Square in commemoration of the exact publish often downplayed the expressly anti- moment when the Great War had ended twenty Jewish character of the Nazi program. In the years before. New Yorkers standing at solemn decades-long aftermath of the Holocaust, rules attention while the bugler played might have let of so-called objective journalism inhibited edi- their eyes drift across to the Times Building and tors from fully following up on the genocide, its headlines whipping by on the newfangled rib- with the result that the Times, like other bon of flashing lights. They would have read papers, continued to look away from the reality versions of the headlines that had blared from of what had happened.
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