On March 13, 2024, the OPC hosted a book discussion about “Newshawks in Berlin,” by Larry Heinzerling and Randy Herschaft, with Ann Cooper, which reveals how The Associated Press covered Nazi Germany from its earliest days through the aftermath of World War II.
Heinzerling and Herschaft accessed previously classified government documents; plumbed diary entries, letters, and memos; and reviewed thousands of published stories and photos to examine what the AP reported and what it left out. Their research uncovers fierce internal debates about how to report in a dictatorship, and it reveals decisions by AP that sometimes prioritized business ambitions over journalistic ethics. The book also documents the AP’s coverage of the Holocaust and its unveiling.
In this Clip, Cooper and Herschaft talk about the relationship between Louis P. Lochner, the bureau chief of AP in Berlin from 1924 to 1946, and Kent Cooper, AP’s general manager at the time. They also answered audience questions about Jewish correspondents and the separate news service, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and about Jewish sources for AP reporters, among other questions.
“Newshawks In Berlin” is available for purchase here.
cup.columbia.edu/book/newshaw...
Larry Heinzerling (1945-2021) was a reporter, foreign correspondent, and news executive during a forty-one-year career at The Associated Press. He worked in foreign bureaus in Nigeria, South Africa, and Germany and served as director of AP World Services and deputy international editor.
Randy Herschaft has been an investigative journalist at the AP for three decades. The recipient of a George Polk and an Overseas Press Club Award in 2000 for “The Bridge at No Gun RI”, which uncovered, nearly 50 years later, a massacre of civilians by U.S. troops during the Korean War. Randy was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for their work on the story.
Ann Cooper, Heinzerling’s wife, worked with Herschaft to complete the book following Heinzerling’s death in 2021. She is professor emerita at the Columbia Journalism School, a former executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and former NPR bureau chief in Moscow and Johannesburg.
Moderating the discussion was Andrew Nagorski, a journalist and author who spent more than three decades as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek, serving as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin.
13 мар 2024
